Shadow
by Dream Writer 4 Life
Summary: “She melts into the darkness as if an element of the night. She makes no sound and no mistakes. She is the Shadow.” They need a mole trap, and she is the best they have. A Dream Writer Experience.
1. Chapter 1: Darkness Falls

**Title:** Shadow  
**Author:** Dream Writer 4 Life  
**Rating:** PG-13 for language and violence  
**Genre:** Angst, Action/Adventure, Dark Humour  
**Archived:** SD-1, here, and my site. Anywhere else, just ask, and you shall receive!  
**Spoilers/Timeline:** up through 3.14 "Blowback"; alternative ending to Season 3  
**'Shippers' Paradise:** V/L, S/V, Weiss/OC  
**Disclaimer:** If I owned _Alias_, this is how Season 3 would've gone. In other words, I own nothing. Period. End of story. Wait, no it's not! Keep reading!  
**Summary:** "She melts into the darkness as if an element of the night. She makes no sound and no mistakes. She is the Shadow." They need a mole trap, and she is the best they have.  
**Author's Note:** It's the way J.J. could have rescued the third season: introducing an interesting new character similar to Faye Dunaway's in Season 2 only...young. And blunt. And good. (Maybe.) So, let's commence with Season 3: The DW4L Way! Enjoy!

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**  
This Chapter:** You have a problem? She has a solution...  
**Suggested Soundtrack:** "My Vietnam" by Pink, "Lonely Day" by System of a Down, and "Going Under" by Evanescence

* * *

Shadow

**Chapter One: Darkness Falls **

Another target lost.

Another objective missed.

Another game of Dodge the Bullet.

Another botched mission.

Sydney's stilettos stuttered down the slick cement stairs, one hand slipping on the rusty railing and the other grasping the bleeding wound in her upper arm. Sparks flew as bullets glanced off of the meal guide rail, their pings echoing in the narrow stairwell. She ducked her blonde head and ignored the pain in her ankle, willing the joint to hold until backup arrived.

If that would ever happen.

Just as she reached the bottom (and her aggressors reached the top), the plain white van she had hopped out of only an hour ago skidded to a stop, the side door opening just wide enough for her to lunge through, tucking and rolling as sparks flew once more. The van hydroplaned on the wet pavement as they sped away, hanging a sharp left before the mercs had time to read the license plate.

Sydney remained in the fetal position for a moment as she gasped to regain her breath, still pressuring the wound as blood seeped between her fingers and stained her knuckles. As her body functions slowly returned to normal, she pushed herself up against the wall of the van, resting her head against the vibrating metal behind her. She tugged off the wretched wig, sending bobby pins and clips flying, and she heard the passenger excuse himself as he climbed into the back. Ripping the hair net off and flinging it to the side, she sighed as Vaughn's face swam into her murky vision, intermittently lit by a street lamp. His forehead practically concaved with worry lines even as his eyes literally blazed with anger.

"Why the _hell_ didn't you contact us?" He whispered harshly, muting his malcontent for the sake of their relatively innocent driver.

She rolled her eyes, correctly predicting their ensuing argument. "Vaughn..."

"We had to learn from _them_ that you were in trouble! _From them!"_

"Vaughn..."

"What were you thinking? You didn't even have a weapon to defend yourself with! You could have been _killed—"_

"Well it wouldn't have been the first time," She countered without thinking. In an instant his face flooded with grief and pain as hers must have exhibited raw regret. As he sat back against the opposite wall hugging a knee, she retouched her characteristic stoic face and demanded, "Now will you _please_ pass the first-aid kit before I bleed out?"

He passively reached under the driver's seat and slid her the red plastic box. "Need help?"

"No, I think I've got it. Thanks, though," She added, her tone a littler softer around the edges. She hesitated a moment, contemplating stripping off her entire shirt to mend her wounds but finally deciding against it, opting instead to rip off the damaged sleeve and a section near her midriff for better access. He watched cautiously, wincing as she wiped the blood off her hands and disinfected both wounds with alcohol pads. Gauze cloaked her arm and tape encircled her waist, but as she braced her feet to sit up straighter, she cried out in pain; she had forgotten her throbbing ankle.

Vaughn immediately crawled over, catching the kit before it skidded away as the van sailed over a pothole. She wordlessly allowed him to cradle her boot in his lap, unlacing the complicated knots before gingerly slipping it off. She knew she should tell him to stop, that this-this _dance_ they insisted on performing only left her that much more bitter the next day at work, but the threads of warmth snaking up her calves had nothing to do with pain.

Even as his skilled hands wrapped her rapidly swelling joint, she spilled out the details of exactly how the mission went so horribly wrong. "Gonzales's study wasn't on the second floor. All of our schematics were wrong, so I had to run around the entire building 'til I finally found a guard who was nice enough to point me in the right direction. Lucky for me, he also gave me a nice, swift punch to the sternum, shattering Marshall's new crystal necklace comm piece. So then I had to—"

Every mission for the past month had the exact same plot. Target: Some diplomatic old guy connected to the Covenant. Objective: Steal something seemingly useless but actually priceless. Result: Failure, along with cuts, bruises, sprains, even a few broken bones. So far no one had died, but if things kept progressing, it was only a matter of time.

It was almost as if they knew what was going to happen and where before it actually happened.

This mole business was out of control.

But she felt it extremely difficult, however, to focus on any objective when the whole Vaughn/Lauren/Sydney Triangle issue insisted on pressing the envelope every chance it got. She could count the nights on one hand during which she slept soundly, uninterrupted by dreams of him, his smell, his touch, his whispered murmurs in her ear.... And the fact that she clearly saw them go through the motions of coupledom did not help matters much.

She had tried to like Lauren. She really did. But still loving the woman's husband put a damper on her efforts, and a liberal amount of awkward pauses and one too many Sloane references later, and they were practically enemies. They only spoke when collaborating on missions (although neither missed a shouting match opportunity during briefings), and then their clipped conversations spread icicles across computer monitors. Everyone in the office knew their absolute abhorrence for the other but not many understood the reasons. They had truly opposite personalities, values, tactics, methods. In fact, they only had two things in common, one being their tempestuous tempers.

The other being, of course, Michael Vaughn.

Whenever the two verbally sparred, he invariably stepped in to mediate between the two. He shamelessly took sides, usually defending Sydney's point of view if not the woman herself. "Everything's new for her," He would counter, laying a hand on his wife's shoulder or hand or elbow. "She needs time to adjust."

Contrast, hypocrisy, duality: Sydney could not decide which was worst, or if any even applied to their situation; everything confounded her that much. When on a mission, she and Vaughn worked as two halves of a whole, the fulcrum to his teeter-totter, the Sony to her Cher. Whenever she stepped out of that van and into the party, she fell under the wing of protection intrinsic to his nature. They performed as the team of yesteryear, down to the inane conversations about absurd subjects, including why pop music had taken a turn for the crappy. ("Where did all the boybands go?" "BSB got married, so the fantasizing is, like, over, and ever since Justin went solo, it's just been 'the rest of 'N Sync.' Duh!")

In short, they succeeded. Everything fell exactly into place; round pegs found round holes.

However, as their plane hit the tarmac, all laughter ceased. Smiles inverted. Ease and grace morphed into artifice and disguise. Tears welled. He descended into her awaiting arms, and she descended into her empty apartment and her equally empty bed. The Fates flipped their coin, and the next day at work, their compatibility dipped into the negatives as they avoided each other at every possible turn. His teeter-totter fell flat on the wood chips without her for balance; she wandered into successful but highly unfulfilling oblivion without him for guidance.

After the mission, it was like taking those perfectly satisfying round pegs from before and trying to squash them into square holes.

Hence the duality, and hence her problem.

Yes, his hand slowly massaging her lower calf felt wondrous at the moment, but it would make the following night alone in a cold bed that much worse.

Vaughn fastened the tape and retook his former position against the side of the van. Their gazes locked for a full moment before they mutually broke their bond, and the two remained in pregnant but amicable silence throughout the duration of the journey home.

* * *

"This is unacceptable!" Dixon spat, pounding his fist on one of the glass tables.

Sydney jolted unfavourably from her reverie and glanced around nervously, hoping against hope that no one saw her slight doze. But Vaughn, Lauren, and Marshall stared at Dixon with respectful caution, and if Weiss or her father saw her, neither let it on. _'Maybe I should grow bangs. Then I could sleep in briefings and no one would notice.'_

As soon as Vaughn and Sydney landed on the secret stretch of runway LAX reserved for the CIA, they immediately sped to the Joint Task Force Centre on Director Dixon's command. Jack met them at the door and took his daughter aside, throwing an obvious look of disdain at Vaughn and Lauren as they trod off in the opposite direction. He had urged her to tell him everything, any minute detail that could indicate the identity of the mole. Dixon, he told her, was on a veritable rampage. Five out of the last five missions had been compromised in one form or another, and out of that only three had actually succeeded in the slightest. Tonight, she could have been killed, he reasoned, eerily reminiscent of Vaughn. This mole—

"—Has to be found! This abysmal mission record reflects poorly on all of us from Director of Central Intelligence on down, especially on a branch as large as this one." Dixon paused as he stopped pacing and stood beside the large monitor. Suddenly, he sighed in defeat and shoved one hand into his pants' pockets, leaning against the screen slightly. "I hate to do this, but the order passed down from Langley about ten minutes after your plane took off from Lima. Everyone who has been working in this office since Sydney's reinstatement is being subpoenaed by Washington. Jack, as a Senior Agent, you will assemble a team and collaborate with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the NSC to determine the identity of our mole. Lauren, as our NSC liaison, you are automatically in our envoy. Now, as for the rest of you—"

"Sorry, Mr. Dixon, but none of that is necessary." In unison, everyone's heads swivelled to face the doorway. There stood Special Forces Director Kendall, his chin and ears still pointy as ever, and his smooth head reflecting the light from behind him. He smiled coldly. Jack surprisingly limited his disdain to a minimal lift of the corner of his mouth, but Dixon and Vaughn were not as covert; Sydney almost chuckled at their open sneers. "Well thank you, gentlemen, for the warm welcome." Dixon opened his mouth begrudgingly, but Kendall moved out of the doorway and into the hall before he could speak. "Now, if you'll follow me," he began, gesturing down the corridor to the old section of the building, "we'll get down to business."

While Vaughn, Lauren, Weiss, and Marshall all glanced at Dixon for confirmation, Sydney hurried after him, followed shortly by Jack. She caught up with the former Joint Task Force Deputy Director and fell into stride. "What the _hell_ are you doing here?" she questioned sharply, not bothering to check her volume.

Without glancing at her, he answered, "And hello to you, too, Agent Bristow. I've been fine; Nevada's beautiful this time of year, though the dust storms do get a little violent—"

"You're not here to drop another bombshell, are you?" she interrupted, not caring that anyone could overhear their conversation.

He smirked broadly as he opened the door to one of the old conference rooms. "Depends on how you define 'bombshell.'"

Before she had a chance to reply, he ushered everyone into the dimly lit room and shut the door with a final click. The agents arranged themselves spaciously around the boxlike conference table. Kendall strode to the head of the room and motioned for Dixon to take a seat next to Sydney. He did so stiffly and unwillingly.

Kendall planted himself firmly by the large, old-fashioned screen, his larger-than-life presence and haughty Southern grin stifling the room. "It's not a secret y'all have problems," he began, both hands hidden in his pockets. Lauren shifted nervously, not used to Kendall's piercing gaze and overwhelming aura. "These missions are an embarrassment, to say the least. While not every mission has _failed_ per se, any degree of failure is unacceptable to the CIA and the United States of America. The smallest slip could mean the difference between coming home unscathed, without a limb, or in a body bag. And yes, Agents Bristow and Vaughn—" He glared at the two partners, who each jumped up angrily "—I know it's not completely your fault. There's this whole mole business that complicates things. Well, I've got something to remove that complication. Actually, _someone."_

Suddenly, Sydney felt the distinct impression of being under surveillance. Almost imperceptibly, she straightened up in her seat and began to peer about. Cameras, a given in any corner of the Ops Centre, did not feel like this; a human somewhere within the room stared blatantly at all of them. Her father, not three feet away, seemed to perk up as well, his beady black eyes darting into the dark spaces of the room. Sydney met Vaughn's gaze, and they exchanged an urgent, silent conversation. She knew Kendall noticed their anxiousness, and his chest swelled with pride as he cleared his throat and recalled their attention.

"I met her through my brief stint as an FBI officer. She also worked with MI-5, German Intelligence, French Intelligence, Indian Intelligence, was a Special Forces officer under my predecessor, and worked for the CIA as a double when the KGB was falling apart. Her record is impeccable, practically flawless. She speaks Russian, French, German, Italian, multiple Slavic dialects, Norwegian, Japanese, two Arabic dialects, and one Chinese dialect. The only two people in the United States Intelligence community who speak more languages and dialects are in the same family and happen to be sitting in this room."

Sydney blushed and slightly ducked her head, but Jack continued his excruciating scan of the room.

"She melts into the darkness as if an element of the night. She makes no sound and no mistakes. She is the Shadow."

Over his shoulder, from the unlit recesses behind the large monitor appeared a woman — not much older than Sydney — with waist-length hair that matched her name. She stood just on the outer rim of the farthest light, the weak illumination reflecting off her pallid skin. Thick black and red outlined her crystalline blue eyes, ones that seemed to set ablaze anything they gazed at. The judgemental angle of her chin, strong jaw, and swoop of her cheekbones added years to her age, contradicted by the smooth skin around her heavily made-up eyes. From the waist up, the woman appeared fairly professional in a fitted black blazer over a red and black lacy corset. But then she shifted her weight, and Sydney caught a glimpse of a short pleated skirt paired with large-holed fishnet stockings and the largest boots she had ever seen. The buckles gleamed, light reflecting back up onto the ceiling, and they raised her within an inch of Kendall's height.

She felt Weiss sit up and lean against the table in interest.

Catching Sydney staring at her clothes, the woman stepped completely into the light with one hand planted firmly on her hip. "I'm in a Goth phase right now," She stated smoothly, her voice surprisingly full of rich, deep tone but also edged with lethal venom. "My last phase was pink and frilly. I grew out of it when I was three." Her chin dipped momentarily in respect as her gaze crossed Jack Bristow's, and she completely ignored Weiss and Dixon on her way to Vaughn and Lauren. _"You_ have potential—" She nodded to the former "—but you, on the other hand...I'm going to have fun with _you,_ Barbie." Sydney easily suppressed a giggle at Lauren's obvious indignation: her lips practically disappeared as her cheeks both puffed and flushed at the same time.

Kendall, offering a half-grin to no one in particular, shifted his weight to quell any brewing rebuttal. "That's enough, Shadow. Why don't I leave you alone for a while to get to know each other?"

"No!" Lauren cried, trying desperately to reign in her emotions. "As the NSC liaison to this office and part of the mole task force, I demand to see proof of this woman's credentials."

Looking slightly bemused, Kendall removed one hand from his pocket to run it over his bare head. "Alright. What do you want to know?"

"A name would be a good place to start."

"Shadow will suffice," The woman answered automatically, staring directly at the blonde agent. "If you ever call me anything else, I'll have to kill you." Somehow, Sydney thought she _had_ killed on account of her name. _"You_ may call me either Shadow or Shay. As for my credentials..." She continued striding to the centre of the box-shaped tables and facing Sydney, she recounted Sydney's biographical information from her classified file in Russian and from memory, tacking onto the end, "How's that Lit degree working out for you?

"Still not convinced?" She faced Sydney's father. In a Southern accent, she drawled, "Name: Jonathan Donahue Bristow. Age: Fifty-five. Formerly married to Laura Bristow A.K.A. Irina Derevko A.K.A. 'The Man,' former KGB officer. Native Canadian. Recruited in 1970 and turned double agent inside SD-6 after Arvin Sloane left the CIA to join the Alliance. Left-handed. Has a doctorate. Languages: Russian, Chinese, Spanish, German, various Arabic dialects. Imprisoned for collaborating with Derevko after daughter Sydney Bristow disappeared. Freed after daughter's return.

"Or how 'bout this?" Her voice returned to normal with the question, but it reverted to an Irish accent when she faced Weiss. "On'y reason I'm botherin' spendin' time on ye is 'cuz yer best friends 're Sydney Bristow an' Michael Vaughn. Shot i' th' neck three years ago. Now drinks more 'n an Irishman on Saint Patty's Day."

Weiss did not seem put off in the slightest; rather, he winked slyly at her before she advanced towards Dixon. In German, she gave him the same treatment, congratulating his relatively new position with a brusk, _"Glückwünsche übringens."_

Dixon nodded politely once, an amused expression lilting his dark eyebrows. His gaze locked with Sydney's for a moment, and he silently expressed his surprise before eagerly turning back to the captivating woman: she glared down at Vaughn. _"Finalement! Le deuxième noyau à ce problème."_ She peppered his biographical information with intimate references to Sydney, but Lauren — who knew but one language — merely reacted because she heard Sydney's name.

"You guys must have some really f***ed up conversations around here." Shay's second hand attached itself to her hip as she addressed a practically quailing Lauren Reed. This time, she adopted a perfect proper English accent. "Name: Lauren Reed. Kept her last name after marrying Michael Vaughn. Daughter of Senator Reed, who just happens to oversee the appropriations committee for the CIA. Her father classified most of her records as Omega-17, but I have my ways. NSC desk agent because stuffy ole Daddy didn't want her breaking a nail while defending her country. Apparently fancies out-of-style neck scarves, the roots of her hair, and really bad British accents. I'm sure this kind of atrocity takes practice, dear, so I congratulate you on time well spent. Parents live on a farm in Virginia. Too bad those Southern yankees couldn't rub off on her. And, judging by the way her eyes are bulging, she probably feels overwhelmed and inadequate next to all the good talent in the room. Well, you should, darling."

She paused and straightened to her full height, crossing her arms over her chest in triumph. In her normal voice, she stated, "How's _that_ for credentials? Or... _Gjør De hører mere? Ik ben zeker er zijn andere talen die u interesseren. __Jamais vá a Brasil? Posso estar a mão aí, também."_

"Alright, that's enough, Shay," Kendall lazily interjected, one eye on the increasingly red Agent Reed. Without deterring her gaze, Shay retreated to Kendall's side and remained with her arms crossed and chin uplifted. Sydney hid a smile behind her fist as Lauren sunk even further into her chair, and Weiss clamored to catch the strange agent's eye. "Shadow will be leading an independent investigation into the mole, so I have given her clearance to any records she could possibly need. I hope she meets with the same accommodations by each of you." Kendall glared directly at Jack, who returned it with matching ferocity. "She will also accompany you on any missions she deems necessary. Got it? Good. You're dismissed."

The noise level maintained as the agents rose and exited the room in groups; only Dixon remained behind with Kendall and Shadow to discuss logistics. Weiss and Sydney left together but arrived at the door at the same moment as Lauren and Vaughn. Sydney and Vaughn's gazes lingered for a moment before he let her and Weiss pass in front of them.

"What the hell was that?" Weiss asked, tone a mixture of awe and indignation.

Sydney pretended to tend to a loose hem in order to avert her eyes. "Vaughn and I...kind of exchanged words on the mission—"

"Not that, Princess Other Woman," he scoffed, rolling his eyes. They reached her desk, and she collapsed into her seat as he perched on the corner. "That Shadow chick. What do you think of her?"

A small smile lilted her lips as she began packing up for home. "Well, since she seems to dislike Lauren...She's my type of person."

"That's sexy," Weiss moaned. Sydney groaned and slapped her friend's arm. He held up a hand and defended, "Hold on. Let Weiss have his moment. Oh Lord. Merry Christmas!"

She slapped him again and began shutting down her computer, shuffling pencils, and filing papers. Pausing in thought for a moment, she reasoned, "But seriously. This... _Shadow_ seems like an interesting character. She's definitely great at linguistics, but...I don't know. If she's a friend of Kendall's, can we really trust her?"

Weiss seemed to completely ignore her. Instead, he stared in the direction of the conference room. Shadow, Kendall, and Dixon exited, and the men led her to a bare metal desk — void of even a computer — and inaudibly briefed her on odds and ends. Weiss vibrated with happiness. "She has a desk by me! A desk! _By me!_ There really _is_ a God! I need to start preparing..."

Sydney shook her head and rubbed her forehead with her palm. "I need to get myself real friends."

"At least you're smiling again." Weiss grinned genuinely as she ducked her head, stuffing a folder into her briefcase. He stood up and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I'll give you a ride home. Same parking spot. I'll meet you there in ten."

She nodded gratefully at him. Reclaiming her coat from where she threw it before leaving on that night's mission, she stopped in mid-stride; someone was eyeing her carefully. Continuing on, she donned the coat and took up her briefcase. When she turned around, Shadow leaned against the desk behind Sydney's.

"You knew I was watching you," Shadow said guardedly, "yet you did nothing. Why?"

Sydney shrugged. "I don't know. I don't deem you a threat."

"That's where you're wrong," she contradicted, pushing off the desk and circling to the front of Sydney's. "Everyone is a threat. Strangers are threats. Your co-workers are threats. Your friends are threats. Your lover is a threat. Your husband, wife, next-door neighbour is a threat. Hell, even you are a threat to yourself. The only true friends are dead people and memories." She lifted her chin imperceptibly and looked at Sydney out of the corner of her eye. Sydney immediately felt uncomfortable on the level of seeing Vaughn and Lauren... She barely stopped herself from shuddering. Suddenly, the strange agent's face broke into a large, genuine smile as she extended her hand over the desk. "I can't wait to finally work with the famous Sydney Bristow. I'm sure we'll learn a lot from each other."

They shook hands, and Shadow sashayed away towards Vaughn, her large boots clunking on the granite floor. Sydney merely stared after her confusedly, her jaw slightly slackened.

_'Well. This should be fun.'__**TBC...**_

***

Winter angst! This is a PIP, so I'll (hopefully) be on a set posting schedule. Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed!

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	2. Chapter 2: Causus Belli

**REMINDER: This story takes the place of all episodes AFTER 3.14 "Blowback." Everything up until then applies.**

**This Chapter:** Shadow's first mission. Aw.

**Suggested Soundtrack:** "Before the Dawn" by Evanescence, "Everytime We Touch (Yanou's Candlelight Remix)" by Cascada, "Remedy" by Seether, and "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd.

**Author's Note:** Translations in English follow the French text. As for the chapter title, it's Latin and I won't give you more than that. Yeah, yeah, I'm evil. Tell me something I don't know. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Two: _Causus Belli_**

The dream.

She had it again.

The dream where everything was, in short, different.

She would slug around in a black-and-white world, working fourteen-hour days plus commuting time and trying to let go of her briefcase but somehow it actually _became part of her hand_ and consuming coffee like air and trying not to remember what he whispered in her ear in the reoccurring nightmare-within-a-nightmare she called the five minutes of sleep she allotted herself. Black streets, black clothes, black eyes; white sheets, white paper, white skin; grey skies, grey houses, grey intentions. The overloaded mule always plodding next to her car in traffic looked positively ecstatic compared to the drawn face she saw in the rearview mirror.

And then . . . BAM.

Technicolor.

Not so much "Pleasantville"-style, but more like "The Wizard of Oz." White-skinned, black-eyed Dorothy stepped through Alice's looking-glass (yes, her unconsciousness mixed metaphors) into a land she thought no longer existed. Blunt blues, rambunctious reds, grand greens, poignant purples, outrageous oranges... Alliteration must have also been part of the package. The colors bled into every aspect of her life, like the warmth in Arizona or humidity of Florida. Eyes turned brown and green; skin fleshed out; and intentions became clear.

He came back to her.

She awoke one night after another five-minute nightmare-within-a-nightmare to find him bustling about in the kitchen fixing a midnight snack. He explained she had fallen asleep during a movie, and he felt too guilty to wake her. So he shut off the television and instead did the crossword puzzle they began earlier in the day. Instead of questioning, she went along with the story, taking a cup of steaming crimson blood from his outstretched hand and drinking deeply. She asked what she had missed, and he replied nothing of importance; just a continuous stream of contrivances and shameless product placement. He had no idea why they had rented the movie in the first place: It smelled funny.

Suddenly, they were at a lavish party in a ballroom strung with gold bunting and lively tapestries. Music floated above the chatter played by unseen musicians, and she danced a waltz with him. Black organdy wrapped tightly around her body and trailed behind her as they floated across the floor; he matched in a black tux and black shirt. They locked gazes through twin green masks.

She glanced around the room and saw red women dancing with blue men, green men drinking with white women. A maskless shadow lurked in the corner of the room, watching over them soundlessly, and as it nodded to her, he drew her close, enveloping her in his warm embrace. He smiled his infamous boyish grin and laughed blithely. Never had she felt so warm, so protected, so in love. He pulled her infinitely closer, and as he bent his head for a kiss, she closed her eyes and waited. . . .

For a kiss that would never come. Upon opening her eyes, she stared straight up at the unforgiving white stucco of her bedroom ceiling. Sheets snaked around her form, practically binding her to the mattress, as if she tried to dance in her sleep. Her face felt sticky, and when she reached up to wipe the sleep from her eyes, she realized she had been crying from the happiness welling inside her during that tantalizing, awful dream.

Or the sadness that came with the fallout.

6:02.

Oh well. So much for that extra hour to sleep in. She extracted herself from the tangled mass of her bed to start the day, turning on every radio in the apartment to chase away the emptiness.

* * *

One coffee.

One bagel.

One sugar.

One cream.

One napkin.

One shadow.

Just.

One.

* * *

In those few short hours she spent at home, the paperwork on her desk grew sizably, and she sighed as she draped her coat across the back of her chair. Sitting down, she grabbed a pen and steeled herself against the first paper she pulled towards her. Luckily, it only informed of a moved briefing. Tossing it in the silent shredder next to her desk, she glanced up again just in time to see Vaughn and Lauren stroll in together, his arm draped about her waist. They both laughed and drank their twin Starbucks coffees and walked in stride — but not exactly as _they_ used to do. Her heart physically hurt with the remembrance of her happiness in the dream — much worse than when she rolled out of bed because now she was being confronted with the reason _why_ she and Vaughn did not watch late-night movies or attend parties arm in arm.

She felt tears and bile well within her, but before she could look away, Vaughn caught her eye. His smile immediately faded, the laughter dying in his throat. He saw the tears; she just knew it. Somehow, it gave her a sadistic satisfaction to see the overt grief and pain etched into the worry lines on his façade. She conveyed her immense sadness with one expressionless glare.

And then she looked away.

"God, these papers keep multiplying. I wonder if they're related to bunnies."

Weiss. Safety. "Eric, paper comes from trees, and I'm pretty sure they're nowhere _near_ bunnies in the grand scheme of things."

"Yeah, but if they fall in the forest, and no one's around to hear them, do they make a sound?"

"Huh? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Exactly." He grinned down at her supportively, reluctantly accepting the mask of happiness plastered onto her face. Patting the large stack of papers, Weiss said, "Okay. Seriously, now. That moved briefing starts in, oh, I'd say about two minutes, so I believe we have to haul some major ass." With that, he roused her and bustled towards the nearest doorway.

She hustled to keep up, tucking her empty mission file carrier under her arm as she fell into stride with a wry smile. "What's with the gallop, Eric?" she asked, eyes peeled for any sign of Vaughn and/or Lauren. "You've never worried about punctuality before. What's got you all hot and — Never mind. I get it." Through the clear glass walls, she saw Shadow standing next to the monitor and chatting to Dixon. This time she wore the baggiest black pants Sydney had ever seen coupled with the same clunky boots, a bone-ribbed black tank top edged with red lace, and fishnet sleeves that rose to mid-bicep. Sydney raised an eyebrow at her friend before tugging open the door and striding in.

The room filled quickly with the usual occupants, and Shadow stood to one side of the large monitor with her arms crossed stoically over her chest. Sydney smiled ruefully at her father's double-take as he hurried in and took a seat next to his daughter. As soon as Marshall bumbled through the door, nearly tripping over his own shoes, Dixon switched on the monitor, and they began.

"Mikhail Polhov." The Director clicked a button, and the picture of a middle-aged, greying man with a strong chin and beady eyes glared at them. "Former KGB, present French mafia. He is suspected to be dealing weapons to multiple Covenant cells including the North American cell. According to our intelligence, he's also tied closely with Julian Sark—" His picture flashed on the screen, and Sydney sneered "—they've been seen together on multiple occasions." Another picture. This time they lounged at a café and swapped a newspaper — an obvious covert device. "Rumour has it that the Covenant put in a shipment order recently. They won't be shipped tonight, but we want something different." The screen automatically shut off, and Dixon began handing out folder profiles. "We want the specs so we can intercept the shipment. Therefore . . ." He glanced over at Shadow, and she took one step forward.

"Everyone will be involved in this mission," she said, pointedly glancing around the circle and resting her eyes briefly on Lauren.

The NSC Agent made to raise her hand, thought better of it, and said instead, "But I'm not field rated."

Shadow merely glared. "Whoops. My bad." Sydney thought she saw a muscle twitch near her upper lip, but she dismissed it as a trick of the light. Shay looked to the room at large again and continued, "Jack and Marshall, you're on comms. You'll be in contact with Director Dixon at all times. Lauren and Weiss, you will patrol the perimeter—"

"What perimeter? Where're we going?" Weiss interjected eagerly.

She brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face and replied, "If we were anywhere but here, I'd cut your tongue out for interrupting me." Surprisingly, he did not seem fazed in the least. "You two will patrol the perimeter as back-up, looking for any signs of detection. Sydney and Vaughn: you're with me." Vaughn and Sydney shared a short glance across the room. "Sydney and I are going in as the daughters of a French arms dealer stationed in Gabon, Africa, Alice and Nicole Lambin. Nicole — that's you, Sydney — is married to the French physicist François Bourgier — Vaughn — who's looking to advance his wife's family's business by developing new weapons. Our objective is to reach Polhov's study and copy the shipment specs during his birthday party tomorrow night. Floor plans, profiles, and everything else are in your folders. Wheels up in four hours. That's all; you're dismissed." She slammed her own folder closed, swept it up, and breezed out of the room before anyone could even stand up.

Sydney and Vaughn locked eyes again, and with a quick nod of her head, they both hastily followed her, Lauren's shrill objections to Dixon and Jack echoing in the background. They quickly found Shadow at her sparsely furnished desk, and each occupied an end. Neglecting any and all pretense, Sydney began, "We don't think this is such a good idea—"

"_We?"_ Shay interrupted, an eyebrow straining towards her hairline. _"Really?_ Well that's interesting."

Vaughn sighed shortly and tried, "It's obvious you know our delicate, uh, situation, and neither of us would like to—"

"Put yourselves in a spot where you could jeopardize that delicate, uh, situation?" Sydney got the distinct impression that the woman mocked them, and her eyes blazed in anger as she straightened up for a retort. But Shay merely crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. "Suck it up. We all do things we don't want to do. And if you want to take down the Covenant, and you want to find the mole . . . Well, get used to doing things my way. Got it?"

They shared an anxious glance, but neither agent said anything.

Shay smiled triumphantly as she took a purse out of a desk drawer. "Good. Now, I'll see you at the airport in a few hours."

She began striding away, but Sydney called after her, "Where are you going?"

Not stopping, the strange agent called, "The Apple Store. I need music for the plane ride. Tootles!"

Sydney and Vaughn stared after her retreating form in an increasingly uneasy silence. They both straightened and refused to glance at one another, eagerly looking for any excuse to bolt; Sydney desperately wished Weiss would barge in with a cup of too-strong coffee and whisk her away to his desk where they could talk freely. Instead, Vaughn's dress shoe toed a crack in the granite and, to her horror, began to apologize for the previous night. "Syd, I'm sorry about the way I acted on the mission—"

"Vaughn, don't," she interrupted, surprisingly stable despite the fact her insides quivered at the remembrance of his touch. Subtext: _'Don't apologize for something you might (possibly?) want and I definitely want and we both know we can't have. Don't apologize for something that can't leave your system. Just don't apologize. 'Cause if you do, it makes what we have — had — have — had that much cheaper.'_

He read this in the expanse of her brown irises and nodded his head to himself. His hands balled to fists in his pants' pockets, and he set his jaw as he looked up and away, almost as if he was trying to swallow the words on the tip of his tongue. At last he said, "You're right, but Syd—"

"_God_, I hate your father, Syd!" Weiss exclaimed to half the Ops Centre as he slogged over to the two agents. He stuffed his hands into his own pockets and grinned ruefully, completely ignoring the tension and conversation he interrupted. "He nearly filleted me in there over some stupid . . . little . . . thing. . . . All right, I probably deserved it, but I totally wasn't listening, so I have no idea what he said."

Sydney snorted quietly and Vaughn rolled his eyes as they desperately avoided the other's eyes. Finally extracting his hands, Vaughn announced, "I've got to get back to work. I'll see you later." His gaze flickered to Sydney's, and her heart leapt despite herself.

Weiss noticed this sudden change in demeanor and quickly steered her over to his desk under the guise of rearranging papers. "So this mission, huh?" He began, sorting folders without even glancing at their contents. "Don't you think it's a little—"

"Look, Vaughn and I, we're mature adults," she reasoned, slightly overzealous. "I'm sure we can handle posing as husband and wife for a few hours at a dinner party."

He paused and glared at her under his eyebrows. "Thank you, Miss I Need a Life Outside the Great Los Angeles Triangle," Eric deadpanned, plopping down in his chair. "No, I _wasn't_ going to comment on the freakishly ironic situation. Don't you think this mission's kind . . . _overpopulated?_" Sydney narrowed her eyes in confusion, and he expanded, "There's too many freaking people going! How the hell is she going to keep her eye on, like, twenty people at once while only _seeing_ two of them and maintaining her cover?!"

Shrugging, Sydney cocked an eyebrow and replied, "She's the Shadow. I bet she can do anything. Hell, I bet she could fly if she tried hard enough."

"Oh, here comes another mental picture. . . . Ah, there it is! Damn, that's great stuff!"

* * *

A curl slung down to bounce in front of Sydney's face. She huffed at the stubborn lock of hair and attacked it yet again with a barrage of bobby pins. Beside her, Weiss sat at a table loaded with armament, holsters, and bulletproof vests. He catalogued them carefully and slipped extra clips into pockets in his vest. Vaughn and Lauren conversed softly in the next room, and no one knew where Shadow was. Only Jack's sharp rebukes through their earpieces removed Weiss from the case.

As soon as they landed on a remote runway just outside Paris, Jack hurried the entire team to a safe house halfway between the capital and Marseille, where Mikhail Polhov was staging his grand birthday party. There they found clothing, ammunition, and a fully-equipped surveillance van for Jack and Marshall. Ever since, everyone had been doing their own thing, trying not to step on any toes in the process.

Just when Sydney fastened the final pin, Vaughn and Lauren strolled in, still speaking in hushed tones. A basic black tuxedo clung to his form, complemented by a slightly askew bow-tie. She frowned into the mirror but turned around all the same. Their gazes locked for a moment before his eyes briefly trailed over her body, taking in the form-fitting, knee-length white cocktail dress and strappy heels in the process.

But Lauren did not notice; instead, she peered cautiously at the weapons display before Weiss. She tip-toed over and handled the weapons with almost practiced clumsiness. Shadow chose that moment to breeze into the room. Weiss's eyes nearly popped out of his head. If she had not seen the dress in a closet earlier, Sydney would have sworn some giant had colored the agent's skin with a gigantic red crayon. A large rhinestone broach nestled between her breasts, and a slit sliced all the way up to just past her knees. Shadow had spent a majority of the plane ride toying with her hair, weaving it into an intricate net with a tight bun on top of her head. The bright eyeliner from their first meeting made an encore appearance.

Her heels clicked a staccato beat as she made her way towards Weiss, Lauren, and the guns. Sydney felt Vaughn start towards his wife, think better of it, and stay where he stood. Shadow took in Lauren awkwardly handling the gun and smiled sadistically. "Do you know what that is, dearie?" she asked, tone condescending. Not waiting for the indignant agent to reply, she picked up an empty M-9, a half-full clip, and a single bullet. Pointing to each in turn, she explained, "Bullet — clip — trigger — shoot."

With the fully-loaded weapon pointed at her face, Lauren blanched and gripped the edge of the table with white knuckles.

Shadow laughed wryly, breaking her stoic façade, and spun the locked gun around her trigger finger, handing the butt of the gun to Lauren. "Don't wet your panties, Agent Reed. Strap on a vest, grab a gun, and try to find some courage. Maybe you have some hidden in that gigantic head of hair." Ignoring Lauren's mumbled protestations, Shadow lifted the hem of her dress and tucked a weapon in a hidden holster strapped around her upper thigh. Sydney caught a peek of its twin around the other leg, and she nodded in approval as Shay slipped a switchblade into the bust of her dress.

Reaching up into an overhead cabinet, she extracted two black clutches and handed one to Sydney. "Standard issue crap," she explained, referring to its contents. "Fingerprinting powder, a knife in the eye shadow, pepper spray lipstick. So don't think about going to the bathroom to _really_ freshen up."

Sydney nodded just as headlights turned into the driveway, sweeping the room through the window. Lauren's hand immediately shot to her gun, and Shadow laughed in pure amusement. "Dear God! It's just the limo!" She scoffed. "It's time. Yo Adrian! _Ouvre la porte, s'il te plaît."_

The car ride seemed eternal, what with her close proximity to Vaughn. They sat side by side in the back with Shadow sprawling out along the side, flipping through TV channels. They sat where the seats encouraged them to, creating a cradle with both stitching and stuffing — not to extreme sides of the bench, where they would hug the plastic siding and kiss the windows. They sat with their arms and knees practically touching, yet the expanse between them seemed as lengthy as the car ride. She recrossed her legs in an attempt to bridge that gap.

Shadow finally relented and sat upright, facing the two other agents. She stared at them critically, and Sydney knew what was coming. "You're too good at this," she murmured, more to herself than either of them. "At being married. It's like you could be Nicole Lambin and François Bourgier if only it were another time and place, and you chose not to — No," she corrected herself, "Fate intervened. Yes, the Fates. 'Fortune has given us this adversity,/ Some wicked planetary dispensation,/ Some Saturn's trick or evil constellation.' But They didn't cut your thread. No. You're too good at being married. 'We must endure it, that's the long and short.' But if They didn't . . . who did?" She cocked an eyebrow in interest, then glanced at the digital clock next to the television set.

"I'm going to have a word with the driver about our getaway. Adrian probably has no idea where we're supposed to meet after the mission." With that, she scooted closer to the distant privacy partition and lowered it, talking in hushed French to their limo chauffeur/undercover CIA agent.

Vaughn and Sydney leaned closer to one another, neither really sure who initiated the movement. Barely moving her lips, she began, "Does she—"

"—Disturb you?" he finished, eyes wide with incredulity. "Yeah, just a bit. Weiss thinks they're a perfect match, and I'm beginning to agree."

She nodded and let their paltry conversation stand. _'This,'_ she thought, _'is one step away from romantic comedy nervous laughter.'_ They could never fathom broaching the deep issues Shadow so deftly dredged up. It just was not in their nature: symbolism, guesswork, silent conversations, and avoidance conquered all. So instead of tackling the issue, they allowed it to pass by the wayside and buried it in their dust, letting it fester like every other unspoken cataclysm along the way.

In other words, they stared off silently in different directions for the remainder of the journey.

They also refrained from commenting on how _right_ it felt to walk into that lavish party arm in arm as husband and wife. Shadow was right: they _were_ too good at being married.

Shadow entered first, heels clacking on the sparkling marble floor, and she introduced herself and her companions to the host, who waited by a set of metal detectors. _"Bonsoir, Monsieur Polhov,"_ she crooned, offering her hand and an uncharacteristic smile. _"Je m'appelle Alice Lambin, et je vous présente ma sœur Nicole et son mari François Bourgier."_ ["My name is Alice Lambin, and this is my sister Nicole and her husband Francois Bourgier."]

Sydney also offered her hand, which the surprisingly large man kissed. He glanced up at her companion, and his eyes lit up in recognition. _"Ah, Monsieur Bourgier!"_ he exclaimed in Russian-tinged French. _"Est-ce que vous êtes l'homme de Gabon? Qui vendez le . . . Vous savez. D'accord! Entrez, entrez. Il faut que nous parlions, Bourgier. Ecoutez — vous avez une belle femme, hien?"_ ["Are you the man from Gabon? Who sells the . . . you know. Okay! Come in, come in. We must talk, Bourgier. Listen — you have a beautiful wife, yes?"] Vaughn tightened his grip around Sydney's waist and planted a peck on her temple before assuring the man he knew of his wife's beauty.

All three agents heard a small gagging noise through their earpieces.

As soon as they left earshot, Shadow pretended to whisper to Sydney, but instead spoke into her comm. _"Je suis choqué. Tu comprends le français._ Frankly, I'm surprised you understand English." Vaughn shot her an annoyed look, but she ignored him, instead flagging down a waiter for champagne flutes. Taking two and handing one to each agent, she threw a brief look over her shoulder before muttering through tight lips, "I'm gonna get some food and spec out the place. You two . . . be married."

The square ballroom shot straight up into a cathedral ceiling strung with gold bunting. Landscapes mingled with portraits and impressionist ponds on the walls. The entire room burned with a muted gold glow, bronzing white skin and lightening dark. A string quintet consisting of two violins, a viola, cello, and bass began strumming from their modest corner, churning out a Strauss waltz. Couples set down their dainty plates and glasses on every available surface and began gravitating towards the centralized dance floor.

Sydney's palms began to sweat as she and Vaughn became increasingly exposed. Would he ask her to dance? It would most certainly fit their characters, but Lauren listened on the comms and what would she think if her husband asked his old girlfriend to dance at a birthday party where the wife was not present and Sydney dressed as she was and he handsome as he was and both as tipsy as they were—

Vaughn suddenly slipped the flute from her grasp and set both down on a nearby table, knowing they would never return to it. Taking her right hand in his left, he smiled cordially with just a hint of slyness in his eyes. _"Est-ce que tu veux danser avec moi? Je veux signer tout sa carte."_ ["Do you want to dance with me? I want to sign all of your card."]

"_Bien sûr, mon chéri. Ma carte est réservée pour toi."_ ["Of course, my dear. My card is reserved for you."] Of course it was what Nicole Lambin would say to her loving husband, but just a corner of that statement shined with pure Sydney Bristow. She allowed him to lead her onto the floor, and they began to dance, laughing and smiling at each other like absolutely no time had passed.

Too good at being married.

Something crackled in her ear, and their conversation slowly trailed off as they concentrated on their comms. "Floor plans are correct," Shay whispered, obviously covering her mouth with an object. "Polhov's library is down C Hallway, left at O Hallway, and right at M Hallway. That's Charlie-Omega-Mary. Seventeenth door on the left. No, don't stop dancing, you two." The minuscule hitch in their steps was only felt by the other person. "I'll be there in a moment. Beta team, how's the perimeter?"

"Kinda cold," Weiss answered matter-of-factly. "And really lonely. You know, they say blondes are supposed to be fun, but this one ain't talking much. Ouch! What! She asked how it was going!"

"Wrong," Shay muttered, annoyance edging her voice. The lady in red moved back into the room near the snack table. Standing next to the giant tiered cake, she reclasped her clutch and scanned the room, seeming to look for a dance partner. Through closed lips, she ground out, "I asked how the perimeter is, not the status of your sorry ass."

The knowing smirk shared between Sydney and Vaughn hinted of real amusement outside of their covers.

Shay plucked a champagne glass from a passing waiter and began elbowing her way across the dance floor towards the couple, not really watching where she stepped. When she reached them, she tripped over someone's outstretched leg and pitched forward, spilling her liquid down Sydney's front and staining her white dress. Sydney gasped in genuine surprise as the liquid seeped through the thin material and into her skin, and she tried to brush it away with her hand. Shay slapped her forehead and exclaimed, _"Mon Dieu! Désolée, Nicole! __Il faut que je fasse attention."_ ["Oh God! Sorry, Nicole! I need to pay closer attention."] As she steadied Sydney in her arms, she tapped _'G-O'_ on the inside of her elbow.

Sydney received the message. _"C'est rien. __Mais je dois laver ma robe. Euh, lave un peu. François, est-ce que tu peux m'aider?"_ ["It's nothing. But I need to wash my dress. Well, wash a little bit. Francois, could you help me?"] Her suggestive glance fit not only Nicole's train of thought.

Vaughn returned it and, arm in arm, they strode towards the bathroom down B Hallway. They picked that bathroom in particular because of its second door — onto C Hallway. They entered, locking the door behind them, and began organizing their equipment. He hurriedly extracted a photocopying pen from a hidden pocket in the lining of his coat and replaced it into the lining of his sleeve. Patting his breast pocket, he affirmed the presence of the quarter-sized transmitting device. She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a lock-picking kit and the standard can of pepper spray, which she hid in the strap of her dress. They nodded silently at one another, confirming their readiness, and scuttled out of the room, locking the door again with Sydney's kit.

They followed Shay's instructions and avoided human contact carefully — especially Polhov's security guards: They seemed to be _everywhere_ — and found M Hallway with little trouble. The long corridor stretched out for at least a block, furnished only with expensive-looking oil paintings and many, many doors. They paused before entering the hallway, peering each direction to check for guards — the lack of furniture would disallow cover of any kind — and listening for any sign of life other than themselves — the muted faraway talking and music from the party counted, but they were...far away. After nodding to each other yet again, the partners stepped out onto the thin carpeting and began advancing towards the seventeenth door with their backs against the wall.

But before they reached the fourth door, Sydney heard raised voices coming from the opposite end of the hall — angry voices that approached noticeably. She sighed in exasperation, grabbed Vaughn's arm, and sprinted full tilt to the seventeenth door. After nearly breaking the doorknob, they stole into the room and began their search.

Intel indicated that the specs would be in some sort of traveling container or on his desk; he recently journeyed from Moscow, where the CIA suspected he picked up the papers. They both began furiously searching throughout the entire room, each keeping one ear on those voices, now considerably more muted due to the filled bookcases lining every wall. Sydney rifled through documents on the desk with furious fingers, scattering pens and a letter opener or two. A ball of dread began congealing in her stomach, rapidly growing to a lead-sized weight. Hitting the top of the desk at the bottom of the last stack, she pounded it in rage.

"Base Ops!" she cried into her comm piece. "It's not here! The specs aren't here! Someone tricked us."

"WHAT!" four male voices exclaimed.

Just then, someone pounded on the study door and demanded in French for them to open up. Both agents glanced up in alarm. Vaughn instinctively shoved the desk chair under the doorknob to give them time to think of an escape route. The bookcases reached all the way to the ceiling, so they could not hide at the top. The space under the desk could only hide one person, and Sydney therefore refused to even consider it. There was no other door out. Vaughn began whispering to Shadow, demanding she find the study and help them, or at least start searching for another possible place the specs might be.

The pounding became more insistent, and they each drew their guns and picked a side of the doorway, ready for whatever or whoever burst through the door. Finally the chair shattered, and the door banged open, nearly knocking Sydney to the ground. Vaughn flew at the attackers as she regained her footing, and bullets splintered shelves and burrowed into the desk. She broke one guy's wrist to rid him of his gun and proceeded to knock him out with a swift elbow to the temple. The other guards went down similarly, and Sydney poked her head out of the door to make sure their getaway was clear. But when she peered in the direction from which they came, a bullet whizzed past her ear, decapitating a woman in the portrait next to her. She recoiled slightly but shot back, also striking the wall near the attacker. Vaughn soon joined her in the frame, and, with an exchanged look, gathered a plan.

At the same instant, they struck out from the doorway and zig-zagged down the hall, Vaughn providing cover fire as Sydney tried every single door they passed. They fell into the first open one they stumbled upon.

This one offered a hiding place.

It was yet another library, but it connected with another room and featured a small coat closet — one large enough to fit _two_ people. Sydney opened the door an inch to provoke the idea that they were in the other room, and she then crammed herself against one wall of the coat closet and Vaughn. Each held their breath.

The door onto the corridor slammed open, and along with it sounded numerous barks. Sydney sighed in her mind. They brought dogs to sniff them out. Thank God she elected not to wear perfume that night. But all the same...

She heard the raspy noise of a dog sniffing near the foot of their closet door. Sydney willed her breathing and heart to slow and quiet, but as soon as she thought the dog had passed them by, it began barking knowingly, alerting the pursuers to their presence. Sydney looked down. Even in the minimal light, she could see the pinkish stain from where Shay had spilled the champagne earlier. _'Damn it! They smelled the alcohol!'_

Not waiting to consult with Vaughn, she kicked open the closet door to face her attackers, and her forehead ran directly into the butt of a gun, effectively knocking her out cold.

Her senses returned slowly. The first to come back was that of pain. Besides the throbbing lump of her forehead, her ribs screamed every time she breathed, and her wrists felt raw and bloody as they scraped against some form of metal — possibly manacles. Her lower lip protruded greatly, and she knew they had beat her while she was unconscious. Her already injured ankle merely felt numb with pain as it struggled against its own set of manacles. Her skin prickled with goosepimples as a draft skittered across her exposed arms and legs.

Then taste. Iron tinted her saliva and ran red across her tongue as she swept it over her swollen lip.

Smell next. Blood, death, damp soil, and water. She never thought water really had a smell, but . . .whatever.

Her hearing proved her right. Liquid dripped from what she supposed was the ceiling and dropped into a fairly deep puddle. Her chains clanked against the metal chair on which she sat. Her own raged breathing met her ears mingled with that of another — Vaughn. She would know that sound anywhere. Suddenly that puddle did not seem as deep.

Then she could open her eyes. Well, mostly. One was pretty swollen. She lifted her head and nearly screamed. Vaughn stood against the wall facing her with his arms and legs bound to the dripping brick surface. He gasped as he noticed her movement.

"Syd? God, are you okay?" he asked, straining futilely against his restraints. She nodded, though it was painful to do so; speaking would have been worse. He saw through her thinly-veiled lie and struggled to reach her. "Anything broken? Can you talk? Can you _breathe?"_

"Vaughn, stop. You're going to hurt yourself," she whispered, wincing slightly. She twisted her wrists slightly in an attempt to relieve the pressure, but only succeeded in sending a new trickle of blood to pool in her palms. Vaughn watched its progress, and she avoided his eyes as she breathed shallowly.

"They made me watch," he stated, emotion withheld but still blatantly obvious. Sydney glanced up quickly but regretted the moment the room began to spin. Their gazes locked. The tears welled in his eyes, and for the first time, she saw the tracks traversing his dirty and bloody cheeks. She could not stop him from continuing. "They made me watch as they tortured you. They held my eyes open so I could see as they kicked and punched you—"

"Vaughn . . ." she whimpered, moisture wetting her own cheeks.

He barreled on as if he could not stop. "They knew who you were, Sydney. They knew you were Julia Thorne. _Polhov_ knew you were Julia Thorne. We _were_ too good at being married: that's why he let us in without a fight. He thought you still worked for the Covenant and they sent you in to renig on their agreement." Pausing for a moment, he added, "You screamed even though you were almost unconscious. . . ."

Silence reigned for a time as Sydney desperately grappled with her emotions. She needed to regain control of this situation. Without knowing how long she had been out, she had no way of knowing whether there had been a rescue attempt — or even if there _would_ be a rescue attempt. And Shadow. What happened to her? Did they capture her, too, and they were holding her somewhere else, or did she manage to escape?

And then a third option occurred to her, slightly more cynical than the other two. Had Shadow been involved in the kidnapping? She first thought back to the SD-6 mole hunt and Ariana Kane. Was the hunter the quarry herself? "What about Shadow?" she asked, her voice barely audible over the dripping water.

His shoulders slumped noticeably as he answered. "Right before they swept us for bugs, she said over the comms that she was on her way but..." he trailed off. She could tell their misgivings about the strange agent matched. "For now, we're on our own. Okay, I've been planning, and here's what I've come up with—"

But Vaughn was cut off by a barrage of gunfire that erupted down the hall from where they were being held. Sydney's hope immediately rose, and she began yanking at her bonds with renewed vigor. All too suddenly the bullets ceased, and keys jingled hastily at their door's lock. At last it slammed open, and in fell Shadow in the same red (albeit stained) dress and carrying a weapon.

"Next time," she heaved, "pick a cell _closer_ to the house." With that, she holstered her firearm and extracted a three-inch-long metal tube from the bust of her dress. "_Real_ laser pen," she explained as she pressed a button and began searing through Sydney's chains. "Never leave home without it."

In a matter of seconds, she had both agents free and ready to flee. Vaughn nearly carried Sydney (the pain from her ankle and ribs upon standing nearly made her pass out again) as they clambered awkwardly down the cinderbloock corridor.

"Now, here's the thing," Shadow called back to the lumbering pair. "We kinda have to hurry: they're in lockdown mode. Seems they don't like it when you kill about ten security guards."

"Who's waiting for us on the outside?" Vaughn asked, nearly grunting with effort as he helped Sydney over a body.

Shay offered a small shrug. "No idea. But I hope it's someone who knows how to drive really, really fast." They came upon a staircase that led to an armor-reinforced steel door, mostly likely opening up onto the outside. She stopped them short and ascended the staircase by herself. Unfastening the broach from her dress, she stuck it near the top of the door and twisted the central jewel before running down again. "You might want to duck."

The broach blasted away the door, and she recovered the piece of unharmed jewelry as they escaped into an awaiting van. Despite his injuries, Vaughn helped Shadow patch Sydney up as best they could as Jack drove them to the nearest French hospital.

Vaughn's hands never left Sydney. Not for a moment.

_**TBC . . .**_

* Both quotations are from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Well then. Feedback and constructive criticism are encouraged. Hope you enjoyed!

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	3. Chapter 3: Hyoscine

**This Chapter:** Pissed Shadow, anyone? No? How 'bout some scrambled eggs doused in Hyoscine? Trust me, you'll enjoy. . . .

**Suggested Soundtrack:** "Whisper" by Evanescence, "Carousel" by Norah Jones, "Shed Some Light" by Shinedown

**Author's Note:** 1. As I reminded y'all last chapter, this story takes place _after _Lauren's mole-y reveal, so regrettably, yes, she is the mole. I'm just taking the base of what J.J. gave us, and I'm fixing it. 2. Hyoscine (also known as scopolamine) occurs in the roots of certain herbs belonging to the nightshade family, dissolves readily in water, and is useful as a truth serum. (Thank you, Encarta, for a verbose explanation that I peared down.) Just so you know. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Three: Hyoscine**

"This is unacceptable!" Shadow exclaimed, redressed in her combat boots, circus-tent-sized black pants, and tank top. She stood by the monitor in the briefing room back in L.A. As soon as they patched Sydney up in France, they flew back to the States and were hurried straight into the nearest unoccupied briefing room. Dixon had been pacing, but the lividity of Shadow's face sat him down, and he allowed her to take over the debriefing. She immediately jumped down their throats even before all of them took their seats. Vaughn, now back in the presence of his wife, released his protective hold on his ex and sat next to Lauren and close to Shay while Sydney's wheelchair resided next to Weiss on the opposite side of the room. Marshall shrunk into his chair in an attempt to seem inconspicuous, and Jack stood stoically behind Sydney's wheelchair.

Genuine fear permeated the room.

She paused with her arms tensed at her side, balled into fists, and she glared menacingly at each person in turn. Red the colour of diluted blood streaked across her cheekbones as if she applied too much rouge. Her eyes blazed with the heat of a blue flume, and her chest heaved greatly with rage. "Two agents of this country — two of your _friends_ almost died tonight because _one_ person couldn't keep their mouth shut! Now, I know I haven't been here that long, but I don't believe that's a good thing around here. Intelligence is leaking out of here like water from a crack in the fucking Hoover Dam! This is unacceptable!" She repeated, voice climbing to a dangerously fevered pitch.

Despite her twinge of fear, Sydney felt something akin to relief flood her aching system. Finally! Someone with the nerve to say things bluntly and without fear of reprisal. Someone who knew what she wanted and how to get it. Someone who would solve this situation, no matter the cost. Sydney did a mental happy dance until her gaze inadvertently crossed Vaughn's, and the perpetual gloom and weariness shrouded her again.

'This _is unacceptable.'_

Shay slammed her fists onto the table in front of Lauren, causing her to jump anxiously. "In light of this mission, I've decided to move up my time table. Effective immediately, all of the agents in this office are under investigation. I have sanctioned all of your records, papers, anything you've ever _touched_. As soon as someone is cleared, then they work for me."

Everyone knew what she meant.

Turning to Jack, she demanded, "You will turn over any and all findings previously acquired. I will review them and accept or discredit them accordingly. The rest of you... Prepare for your interview." With that, she offered a face-splitting smile, and dimples appeared in her round cheeks as her blush dissipated. The smile did not reach her eyes.

Dixon rose, and she took his seat, folding her hands on top of the table and sitting up ram-rod straight. He took his usual place at the monitor. "What in hell went wrong out there?" he asked, beginning the actual debrief. "Does anyone have any explanations whatsoever?"

"Someone tipped off Polhov," Vaughn replied, shifting in his seat. "He obviously knew someone was going to be there last night, so he moved the schematics somewhere else. We didn't find them."

"Yeah, we did," Shadow interrupted. All eyes turned on her as she bent over, unzipped a cargo pocket in her pants, and pulled out a thin manila folder. "I found them when I was searching for Agents Bristow and Vaughn. Ironically, they were in the room Polhov's guards found you in. Oh, sorry 'bout the champagne, by the way. I hope your dress is all right."

Sydney merely stared and nodded blankly.

Dixon took the folder and began scanning its contents. A phantom of a smile tugged at his lips, and he shut it with a clap. "Good job, Shadow."

"I know." She sat back and glared at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

"Someone also must have tipped them off to our plans, 'cause they seemed to know exactly what we were going to do before we did it," Weiss said from beside Sydney, startling her. The pain medications flowing through her system began to take affect, and her attention began wandering dangerously.

Vaughn nodded in agreement. "The guards knew exactly what room we were in when they found us the first time. The mole set us up."

"Looks like we need a better _mole_ trap," Weiss joked, winking at Shay overtly. She rolled her eyes and scowled.

Dixon, sensing that all pertinent information ran dry, dismissed them quickly, assuring the analysts would get working on the specs as soon as possible. "Until then," he added, glancing meaningfully at Sydney, "no missions. I want all of you to focus your attention on this intel . . . and getting better."

Jack took over Sydney's wheelchair and pushed her towards her desk, where he left her alone with Weiss. "How are you doing?" Eric asked, perching on the edge of her desk as she shut down her computer.

"Not that great," she answered, slowly brushing the hair out of her face and accidentally revealing a hefty black eye. "My entire body aches, and I'm pretty sure my ankle will be messed up for the rest of my life. Other than that . . ." she trailed off. Her memory wandered back to what Vaughn said to her in the cell. His voice had dripped with pain and regret; he had strained to reach her, to protect her; he would not leave her side afterwards . . . ! What the hell could it mean? Despite her profession, she never excelled at applying her stellar critical analysis skills to her personal life. Did he still love her? Or did he become the biggest hypocrite this side of Washington, D.C.?

"You two had a moment, didn't you?"

She glanced up in surprise to see Weiss smiling sadly at her. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Syd, this isn't a mission; you don't have to lie anymore." He leaned in confidentially. "Everyone can see something happened. If you share, it might help."

She sighed heavily and rubbed at her temple. "Nothing can help this. Nothing."

Shrugging, he lugged himself up and raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. I can take a hint. No more pushing." He glanced down at her broken form. "Are you good to go? Need a ride or anything?"

"No," she replied, rising out of the wheelchair and placing her belongings in it instead. "I'm just going to give this back to Medical Services and head home to take the Longest Bath of All Time. You know, they should really invent water that just stays warm forever."

"I believe that's called a hot tub, Syd."

"Right. I knew that." She cracked a small smile, hoping her friend would forget about his earlier assumptions. "I might just invest in one of those."

His face broke out into a large grin. "When you do, I just might never leave your house. What with all the fly honnies—"

"Oh, you did _not_ just say 'fly'—" She stopped short, noticing Vaughn walk into the Rotunda alone and head for the two of them.

Weiss followed her line of sight and got the hint. "I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, and sleep in, for God's sake: I saw you get the paper at six thirty in the morning." And he disappeared like the smell of doughnuts on a breeze.

Sydney pretended not to notice Vaughn as she hobbled away towards Medical Services, but he soon caught up to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Syd . . ." he whispered softly, barely audible over the muted hubbub from agents on the graveyard shift. Still she refused to look at him. "Sydney," he tried again, this time stronger and more demanding, a firmer grip on her shoulder. She continued walking as if trailing her ex-boyfriend behind her like a stray slip of toilet paper happened every day. Finally, he yanked her by the shoulder, forcing her to halt. "Sydney. Listen to—"

"You're hurting me," she murmured quietly, eyes boring straight ahead. His grip loosened slightly as if he did not know of what she spoke, and she shrugged off his touch and continued walking.

He matched her stride for stride and at last overtook her, standing in front of the wheelchair so she could not pass or avert her gaze. "Look," He began, his hands balled in his pockets stubbornly, "you wouldn't let me say anything after the last mission. _Please_ let me say something now."

After closing her eyes meditatively, she opened them again only to gaze directly into his own. She pretended not to notice the pleading look in his gaze. "There's a reason, Vaughn," she stated clearly and deliberately, as if explaining something to an extremely young child. "You change your story every time we speak. I don't think I should buy into anything when I don't know what I'm getting."

"That's not fair, Sydney!" His forehead wrinkles nearly tripped over themselves for attention.

"Since when is anything _fair_, Vaughn?" she cried desperately. _"Especially_ when it comes to us? Look, I don't want any excuses; I don't want any explanations; I don't want any hollow promises. I just...I want you to do what you think is right. Use your Boy Scout morality and figure it out. But until then, leave the split personalities at home." Literally pushing past him, she continued down the hall, struggling to convince herself the roof was leaking (even though there were about forty stories above her) and she was _not_ crying.

Doubt filled her heart. The 'right thing' could mean any number of actions to him! His sense of duty and commitment would lead him to follow his wedding vows and stay with Lauren — forever. However, his heart and damning rebellious streak would lead him to _her_ — forever. She knew she could be potentially screwed over, but.... She needed to know. Ignorance could no longer be confused for bliss.

She passed through the frosted glass doors of Med Services only to see Shadow sitting in a waiting room chair being attended to by two doctors. One held a stethoscope to her chest while the other shined a light in her eye. Sydney reclaimed her belongings and allowed the receptionist to wheel away the chair. She approached the strange agent as she began fighting off the doctors, mumbling curses under her breath. Shadow jerked her face away from the second doctor and grimaced at Sydney. "They seem to think I have a concussion," she ground out, practically growling. "Agent Bristow, tell these two _nice_ men that I'm perfectly fine and able to go home."

One of the men she recognized; he had treated her immediately after her return. The doctors moved away from Shay, and she swayed dangerously in her seat. Smiling faintly, Sydney replied, "I think you're on your own. These guys can be _very_ persistent."

Getting fed up, Shadow pushed the men to the side and huffed, "Fine! I'll take a fucking taxi! Damn!" Both doctors scowled but retreated to the confines of their treatment rooms. Shadow stood up but nearly fell back down again as if she were drunk, and Sydney held her up by her shoulders and guided her out the doors.

"Do you need a ride?" Sydney asked curiously, also limping on her sore ankle.

Shadow shook her head slowly. "No, that's all right." Sydney could tell something else hung in the air between them, but Shay did not feel well enough to expose it with her characteristic bluntness. She needed something to help her along. When Sydney's shoe caught on a crack in the granite floor, and her face twisted horribly, Shay found that opportunity. "Your ankle hurts that badly?" she asked, turning her face up to the taller agent and stopping their progress. "I've got some stuff that may help. Pop on over to my apartment some time. Hey, you're not doing anything Friday night, right? Come on over then. Directions are in your purse; I took the liberty of slipping them in when you stumbled." With an impish grin and a nod, she strode away on her own power, completely stable, as if she had been faking the entire time.

Sydney could only stare after her.

She actually began looking _forward_ to Friday night. Her social life had dwindled since her return, limited only to Foreign Drink Night with Weiss or going to bars to watch him shake down the regulars at the pool hall while rejecting drunk bastards. Even though she hardly knew Shadow and could hardly predict the type of company she would be, the 'night out' would be better than rereading _Dr. Zhivago_ for the thousandth time. So she prayed her reoccurring dream would stay tucked into her subconscious so as to leave her slightly less than a basket case for Friday night.

But, of course, nothing went the way she planned.

In the one night between her invitation and the event itself, she awoke from the ballroom dream three times.

She and Vaughn shared many 'moments.'

And Weiss managed to spill hot chocolate on her favourite non-black skirt. (No matter what anyone said, it was navy blue. _Navy blue._)

But the final nail in her emotional coffin came before she left from work on Friday. Since Kendall fully exposed her whereabouts during her missing time, Sydney and a number of others higher up in the Agency deemed it advisable that they should keep certain information classified — such as what the scar on her stomach really meant. In other words, everyone kept Vaughn in the dark regarding her stolen eggs.

Well, someone decided to play with matches and lit a fire in that darkness, effectively dispelling the cumbersome ignorance and heating blood to a rolling boil.

Someone decided to leave a copy of Kendall's classified testimony regarding Sydney and her scrambled reproductive organs on Vaughn's desk. His glare alone after he read it could have turned coal into diamond.

He threw down the thick packet of papers onto the new intel Sydney was reading. She looked up in startled confusion. "What was that?" she asked, having a sneaking suspicion already. She saw the 'Omega-17' stamp on the front and automatically assumed.

Circling around to face her, he hunched over and leaned on the desk, shoving his head at her menacingly. "I don't know, Sydney. Why don't you tell me? Lose anything lately?"

She sighed and slumped in her chair, massaging her temples with her eyes closed. "Oh God, here we go."

"Damn right, here we go!" he yelled, not caring that half the Ops Centre now listened to their conversation. "Why didn't you tell me, Sydney? Why did you keep this from me? I can't believe that you would be so petty as to hide this from me—"

"First of all . . ." she interjected, rising from her seat. She grabbed his elbow and tugged him out into an empty conference room. "Second of all—" she shoved his left hand into his line of sight "—that ring? It absolves you from any right to know about my personal life. _I owe you nothing."_

Vaughn lost a little of his luster, and her eyes gained it, practically blazing in the relative darkness of the room. "But," he stammered, "can't you at least—"

"No, I really can't," she answered matter-of-factly, reading his mind. "I can't tell you what happened without cutting through miles of federal red tape. Did you not see the gigantic 'Omega-17' stamped in red across the folder?" She felt the remaining anger drain out of his system like water through clogged pipes. He perched on the edge of the table and hung his head, exhaling loudly — a poor cover for his sniffling.

After a muted gulp, she hoisted herself onto the table next to him, her hand itching to grab his. Before, that was all it would take to comfort the other: The touch of hands, of lips, of bodies. Words were academic, arbitrary even; neither particularly excelled in verbal proclamations of feelings. Before, when she professed lying to him or after a particularly difficult mission, they pulled out their trusty first-aid kid, which held only one bandage: hand-holding. When her hand glided over his skin or his lips pressed against her temple, everything else flitted away on the back of Time's winged chariot. They were each other's comfort food.

'Were' being the operative word.

Now, they sat together on a conference table mere inches apart, both as shattered and battered as the china shop that bull ran through, both needing comfort only the other could give. . . . And both willfully denying themselves aid, bandaging, and completion. But maybe. . . . Just maybe. . . .

She shifted her right hand ever so slightly, just so that their pinkies touched. He jumped at the contact but responded all the same, hooking his finger around hers and squeezing. That was as far as they could bring themselves; any farther would have been too painful, too right, too wrong. She felt the guilt seep into his being, and they mutually drew away out of respect for the other. This left them staring out into the dark around them, oblivious to the bustling agents shuffling past the room, let alone the rest of the breathing world.

Still, something hung between them.

Besides the obvious Ring of Doom and everything connected to it.

He wanted to know. He _needed_ to know the whole story — or, at least, what she knew of it — from her mouth.

So she cleared her throat and straightened up, preparing herself for his reaction. "Rambaldi's prophecy, they seem to think — _Sark_ seems to think it refers to a child — _my_ child — so they _harvested_ my eggs to fertilize them with the 'essence of Rambaldi.' _That_ was why we destroyed Sark's lab. We got to it before they could do anything." She paused and raised her hand to her stomach, feeling the raised skin even beneath her blouse. Her brain told her to stop there, but her heart felt that he wanted more, wanted her to open up and voice the fears they held in common. Whether they were logical, validated or unfounded. Traveling the length of her scar, she mused, "I don't remember a thing, but . . . I don't see how I could've done it: Let them take a part of me like that. I feel—" She stopped herself, words no longer necessary as he fully covered her hand with his. Even as tears stung her eyes, she scrambled for a way out of this situation.

"Look," she started, sliding off the table and avoiding his eyes, "I need to go. I'll — I'll see you 'round." She motored out of that room as quickly as her legs would carry her, not caring if she seemed conspicuous. The entire scene went badly. He was not supposed to be the way he had been in the past — caring about her and a future that no longer belonged to them. For she felt, she _knew_ that his first anger-bloated thought was not of the practical ramifications, like the 'utter desolation' part of the prophecy, but the fact that she might never be able to have children.

'_But he shouldn't be thinking of that. Right?'_ she questioned herself, preparing for the ride home. _'I guess it's only natural. It's all either of us thought of for a solid year and a half. And maybe — perhaps — he still wishes . . ._

'_No!'_ the Ethos of her psyche admonished. _'He only worries for you _as a friend._ Like before you dated. Before you fell in love._

'_I don't think there was ever a time we weren't in love in one form or another. I don't know what it's like to be friends with Michael Vaughn._

'_Well, I guess I'll have to learn.'_

As Sydney slung her purse onto her shoulder, Vaughn entered the Rotunda and immediately found her in the mass of people. Their eyes locked for a moment, their gaze only broken when he nodded and strode toward his own desk, where Lauren waited. Sydney quickly ducked out of the building before she saw them embrace.

She spent the rest of the afternoon rereading _Dr. Zhivago_ anyway, ignoring the admonishing glare of _The Scarlet Letter_ as it sat upon the highest, dustiest shelf of her bookcase. Her eyes repeatedly glanced at the clock, willing it to speed to the time she was supposed to leave for Shadow's apartment. Pretty soon, she watched the clock more than she read, and she finally gave up her vigil to start the journey.

Digging the scrap of paper out of her purse, she followed the directions exactly and found herself in one of the darker neighborhoods in downtown L.A., one where police sirens sounded as often as wind chimes and crying babies sparked fatal arguments. Shattered glass lay underneath broken streetlamps, and years of graffiti created a colorful glaze over the otherwise melancholy brick walls. Sydney did not mind the watch-your-back atmosphere; rather, she thought it suited her mood quite well. She ascended the narrow, rickety stairs to the top floor — the studio apartment.

The door stood open, and no electric lights illuminated the large, open space. By the light of the full moon flooding the large space through the wall of windows on her left, Sydney saw Shadow sitting rigidly in the middle of the room with her back to the door. A chaise lounge rested against the opposite wall along with a long, low coffee table. Then a hallway ran off into the distance to the left of a small, sparsely furnished breakfast nook. Another wall of windows lay to her right. It spanned every dimension of the actual building, and could have been a penthouse had it been a different place, different neighborhood, different time. It was not a dirty space — the moonlight made it glow and sparkle — but the shadows seemed to throw themselves wherever they pleased, objects (or lack thereof) be damned.

"Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to come in?"

Slightly surprised, Sydney stepped over the threshold and made to close the door but Shadow stopped her.

"Nope. That's okay. You can leave it open."

"But," Sydney stammered, "aren't you . . . ? Don't people—"

"If anyone came in here, they'd be dead before they set a second foot in the doorway," she stated firmly, still facing the opposite direction. Sydney did not doubt her for a second. "Put your stuff wherever. I move a lot, so I don't have a lot of furniture. Most of it's in the bedroom, like the computers, GPS hook-up, radio monitors, and such. You didn't bring a crutch, did you? No? Good. They're not good for the psyche." Sydney paused momentarily in confusion, and Shadow looked over her shoulder. She wore no make-up — no black eyeliner or red eyeshadow. "Pain is one hundred percent mental. When one learns to disconnect pain receptors in the brain . . . Well, you get it." She flicked her eyes, gesturing for Sydney to take a seat opposite her.

She did, and she saw for the first time what Shadow had previously hidden: A miniature, battery-powered lamp, burning incense, and a cherry wood box. "Why don't you have any lights on?" Sydney asked, curiosity overcoming her tact.

Shay shrugged as she flipped on the miniature lamp. "Moonlight is said to heal the soul, which is exactly what you need: A lot of moonlight." She paused and glanced up, a hint of a smile playing in her eyes. "Plus, the electric bill: It's murder." She chuckled to herself as she handed Sydney the burning incense stick. "Breathe that in for a bit while I grab some stuff. It's frankincense," she answered Sydney's unasked question, rising and crossing to the kitchenette. "It opens up the sinuses and the blood vessels in your brain. I just like the smell, frankly."

Pouring two cups of water, she drank from one and stood silently for a time, staring out of the window and onto the city below. "You don't have anything else, do you? No cold, fever, headache, abdominal pain, fertility trouble?" Their gazes caught, and for a moment, Sydney suspected she overhead her conversation with Vaughn. "No? It's just the ankle then?"

"Yes," Sydney affirmed quickly, stretching out her leg to the side of the tiny light.

"Good. I haven't restocked my featherfoil or coriander in months." She glided back over and handed the untouched glass to Sydney before grabbing a pillow off the chaise and tucking it under Sydney's bad ankle. "Do you know how hard it is to get fresh herbs in Siberia in the middle of winter?"

"How do you know so much about herbs?" Sydney queried without pretense, handing back the incense.

Shay pulled the box into her lap and ran a hand over it. In the weak light, Sydney could barely make out finely-etched floral patterns in the dark wood, their presence only announced by the deformed shadows the lamp cast. "My mother was an herbalist. She didn't trust modern medicine much, so she kept an herb garden in the backyard. Although she _did_ take me to the hospital when I needed my appendix out." A wink.

"But tonight isn't about me," she segued, lifting open the lid and removing two vials, one containing a green paste and the other containing flower blossoms. "First of all, to numb the pain, rub this paste onto your ankle." She handed over the vial of green paste. "It was first made by Hanaoka Seishu some hundred-or-so years ago. It's an anesthetic call _mafutsusan_ made from six herbs including wolfsbane and jimson weed. It'll numb the pain."

"But I though wolfsbane was poisonous—"

"Not in small quantities, and as long as you're not going to eat it, you're fine." She smiled reassuringly, and Sydney rolled up her Lycra pant leg and began rubbing the foul-smelling stuff into her skin.

"Secondly," Shay continued, "when you're done with that, wet these petals and plaster them around the wound. It's groundsel, and the ancient Greeks and Arabs used it to draw out fluids. It should help the swelling go down." Sydney did as she was told, and Shay supervised while hugging one of her knees and taking long drags from her glass. The former began to feel scrutinized under Shay's harsh eyes, and a realization dawned on her.

This was her interview.

She moved no differently (so as not to alert Shadow of her epiphany) but analyzed those movements, wondering if she considered her the mole.

"Nope. You're fine."

Sydney looked up in confusion, not knowing whether to let on that she had just read her thoughts.

Resting her chin on her knee, Shadow continued, "You're both the most and least obvious suspect at the same time. You mysteriously reappear after a two-year hiatus and weeks later, intel begins leaking for the office. Very suspicious. But at the same time, we knew where you were the whole time. You've been a double for the CIA twice; why would you turn against us now? You have no motivation to turn against your country; you haven't suffered the big betrayal yet." Sydney had the sensation of being translucent as Shay's blue eyes bored into her own. Her loose hair spilled over her ear, shrouding half of her pale face but leaving the other eye untouched. "Plus," she added quietly, the corner of her lips creeping towards her ear, "I have an instinct. I like you.

"And anyways, why would you walk away from such a fine male specimen as Michael Vaughn just to shoot a few people? Especially since you two are soul mates."

Sydney blatantly averted her gaze to her comically wrapped ankle, not willing to let such a strange agent see her cry. She had enough of this specially-formulated torture that afternoon, but apparently the universe had more in store for her. She wished she could run out of that apartment at light speed or, even better, just disappear and float out on a breeze.

But Shadow would not let sleeping dogs — or any dogs, for that matter — lie.

"I'm not going to tell you I sympathize with you or that I understand — I do, but that's not what you need to hear.

"What you think you need to hear is that he never loved you anyway. You were good for a fuck — maybe a Moment or two — but that's all; certainly not worthy of marriage. He's probably happy and screwing her right at this very moment." Sydney bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain, and the tears cascaded down her cheeks like rain down a windowpane.

Shadow suddenly softened, dropping her knee to sit cross-legged and staring at Sydney in earnest. "But none of that's true. Reality is more akin to shades of grey than complete black and white. What you really need to hear is that this situation just plain sucks. You two loved each other, but he thought you were dead, so he feebly attempted to move on. He's probably staring at some old memento in a lightless room rather than being with his wife. And the thought of marrying you crossed his mind only once, 'cause it got caught before it could escape.

"He still loves you just as much as you love him. I know it hurts to hear it, but it's the God's honest truth. And it's probably true that he won't leave his wife for you — not in a million years — because you mean too much for him to do that to you."

She paused for a time as Sydney let out a choked sob and clasped her hand over her mouth. Everything the woman said both twisted the knife and bandaged the wound at the same time. Sydney had kept everything inside for so long that to finally hear it all voiced out loud came almost as a relief; her tears fell as mingled grief and gratefulness. Self-pity was never one of her strong suits, and when someone did it for her, she felt a thousand times _sadder_ than she would if she just _felt_ the emotions when they occurred.

At least this took her mind off her ankle.

Shadow suddenly rose and, downing the rest of her water, bent to help Sydney up as well. "Come on," she urged. "We're taking a field trip."

"But I'm still—"

"Bah! Whatever. Get off your ass and let's go." Shadow led them down the hall and into the first room — a barren guest room with only a single pull string hanging down from the ceiling. She tugged on it, and a trap door opened, issuing a set of fold-out steps and a gust of cold wind. When they both ascended, they found themselves on top of the building and looking out over the entire city. Sydney gasped in awe. Very rarely did she ever go outside just to be outside, and when she did, it was never after the sun set.

Despite the harsh glow of neon city lights, a full moon shone directly overhead, casting shadows behind Sydney and her companion. The sirens continued, but staring up at that round, luminous orb in the sky . . . Somehow, everything did not seem as bad.

Shadow strode to the middle of the roof and climbed atop a generator, her hair whipping about her form in the high-elevation wind. "Have you ever been so angry, you just want to scream?" Without waiting for an answer, she twisted her face grotesquely, opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and bellowed into the night air, yelling as if she never needed to breath. Her harsh, pained scream echoed between the tall buildings but never grew louder and eventually was lost in the other city noises polluting the night air. Her chest swelled with the effort, but eventually her voice faded, and her bellow petered out.

She stepped down from the generator with a grin and healthily flushed cheeks. "Circle breathing," she explained through heavy intakes of air. _"Knew_ it would come in handy sometime. I could've gone on forever, but I figured you'd get bored." She stopped and waited expectantly. Nodding towards the generator, she urged, "Come on. It's your turn. Get up there and scream your lungs out."

Sydney stared at her in blatant confusion. "But won't someone hear—"

"Not a chance," Shay cut her off, shaking her head in a mixture of sadness and pity. "No one in this city hears your troubles. Sometimes, that's a blessing. But I still wouldn't scream out national security secrets."

She gingerly climbed up on the cool hunk of metal, blinking rapidly in the blistering wind. Balling her hands into fists, she stared out across the city, imagining she could see right into Vaughn's window, or her mother's window, or her father's window, or Sark's window, or Sloane's window, or... She felt the anger bloom in her chest and spread throughout the rest of her body and warming it. She filled her lungs with all the air she could, and anything she had ever wanted to say to anyone — past or present — spilled forth in one long, heart-wrenching note that came from her gut. It said everything.

That she loved Vaughn.

That she hated Sloane.

That she abhorred her father for making her this way.

That she loathed her mother for being so treacherous.

That she would forgive everything if Vaughn came back to her.

That she believed the world should be fair.

That the United States should check in on Africa from time to time.

That she would like to go _one week_ — just one week! — without having to wear a wig.

That Wal-Mart gave crappy customer service, and she was treated crappy enough in the rest of her life and she did not need _their_ shit. . . .

Her voice suddenly stopped, and Shadow helped her down from the generator. Her knees, arms, chin shook with release, with relief. She had not felt so _light_ since her return. Her problems, though still present, had lost their sharp edges, sandpapered down by the pitch of her voice. She even felt a smile creep up on her.

Shadow grinned as she leaned against the ledge around the edge of the building, meaning for Sydney to do the same. They stood side by side looking out over the city, not speaking in the stillness after the storm. Sydney felt as if she could float away, fly, do practically anything. . . .

"What's your real name?" she asked abruptly, turning to face her companion. "The one that's on your birth certificate?"

The other scrutinized her for a moment as if assessing her worth. She blinked once and answered, "Mary Alice Leigh Rose Finch. But if you _ever_ say it aloud to _anyone_, you'll be dead before you finish."

Sydney had no doubt about it.

_**TBC . . .**_

I love this time of year merely for the fact that I get to whip out quite possibly my favorite made-up word. Happy Chrishakwanzatetmadan, everyone! Review to let me know what you think!

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	4. Chapter 4: Piger

**This Chapter:** Gawkwardness with Shadow, another mission, and Shay becomes more human before even more "Gawkwardness with Shadow"

**Suggested Soundtrack:** "Farther Away" by Evanescence, "My Way" by Limp Bizkit, "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers

**Author's Note:** And the tests begin. For the meaning of the title, read the translations closely. Or, you know, type it into a translator. Whatev. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Four: **_**Piger**_

"_Comment est-ce que tu est tombée amoureuse de Vaughn? Est-ce que c'était un coup de foudre?"_ ["How did you fall in love with Vaughn? Was it love at first sight?"]

"_Occupe-toi de tes oignons! __N'en parlons plus." _["Mind your own business! Don't talk anymore."]

"_Je m'en fous. Est-ce que tu l'aimes?" _["I don't give a damn. Do you love him?"]

"_Pas de commentaire. Ne t'en fais plus." _["No comment. Never mind it."]

"_Encore. Il faut que tu dises."_ ["Try again. You've got to tell me."]

"_Mon Dieu! Arrête, s'il te plaît! Je ne peux pas l'aimer. Je ne l'aime pas. Tu piges?" _["Oh, my God! Stop, please! I can't love him. I don't love him. Understand?"]

"_Menteuse. Dite-moi la vérité." _["Liar. Tell me the truth."]

"_Tu es un cauchemar! S'il te plaît, si t__u avais besoin de quelque chose—" _["You're a nightmare! Please, if you needed something—"]

"Syd?"

"_Oh, grâce à Dieu!_ I mean, yes?"

"Can I talk to you a moment?"

"Of course, Eric. I'll see you later, Shay." Sydney mouthed a thank-you to her friend as they strode toward Sydney's desk at a faster-than-normal clip. Her vacation lasted two days — the longest she ever had — before Dixon reeled her back in. The analysts were making progress, but Sydney really did not know why she needed to be there. Weiss's confusion matched her own, and he went on a mission to acquire what information he could. Hopefully, he actually succeeded. "So..." she prompted, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against her desk.

"I have a question," he began, glancing quickly over his shoulder to assure no one else could hear them. "Did you feel really weird when Shadow questioned you? 'Cause I definitely did. She kept looking at me — _looking_ at me — and it was totally distracting."

She rolled her eyes and pushed off her desk, circling around and digging in her briefcase. "That wasn't your interview," she corrected matter-of-factly. "And I doubt she would ever _look_ at you, let alone repeatedly."

Weiss glared at her in confusion, still making sure Shay remained safely out of earshot. "What do you mean, 'wasn't my interview?' How would you know? What makes you such a Shadow expert?"

Sydney shrugged as she balled up a piece of paper and tossed it into her trash can. "I just know. Do you really think such an extraordinary person would conduct an ordinary interview? She'll probably ignore everything you said today."

Narrowing his eyes, he watched her meaningless movements in scrutiny. She thought he might move away from the subject, but when he thrust a meaty finger in front of her nose, she sighed resignedly. "You've already been cleared! She's already questioned you!"

Rolling her eyes again, she arrested her movements and acknowledged, "Yes, she _has_ cleared me, but that has nothing to do with anything. She never questioned me, or even asked for my file, as far as I can tell."

"Then how do you know you're _really_ off the hook?"

"I already told you," she repeated, tone strained as she became agitated, "I just know. She's unconventional. Therefore, it only follows that her questioning methods should be unconventional."

He thought for a moment, neglecting to check behind him before speaking. "I'll go for that," he agreed, nodding as she continued to stutter through her papers. "And if you _are_ right, I can't wait to see Lauren after her 'show' interview. If I thought Shay put me through Hell, imagine what she'd do to Lauren."

"It'll be the best three hours of my life. I'll record it and sell it on eBay. It'll be more popular than the Paris Hilton sex tape or the TMX Elmo." They both turned around to see Shadow smiling at them through her heavy eye make-up. She wore her hair in high-riding pigtails, contrasting drastically with a shredded homemade skirt, severely slashed Russian concert tee, fishnet stockings, and her omnipresent boots. This no longer surprised them; what did, though, was the absence of her black nail polish. Instead, her fingernails were neatly manicured and obviously fake.

Sydney sighed mentally. _'Here comes another mission.'_

And right on cue . . .

"Come on," she said, backing towards a hallway. "Dixon wants us in the briefing room. Or, rather, I told Dixon to want us in the briefing room." She led the way down the hall to the conference room, sashaying her hips to such an extent that she nearly hypnotized Weiss, and Sydney had to slap the back of his head to awaken him.

"Where are Vaughn and Lauren?" Dixon asked as they entered, Sydney and Weiss taking seats while Shay stood as usual. Jack and Marshall already resided within the room. "Did you tell them about the briefing?"

Shadow smiled sadistically, her gaze drawn to something beyond the glass-paneled walls. "You could say that. . . ."

Before Sydney could whip around, Lauren burst into the room followed quickly by her husband. "What the _hell_ do you mean by this, Sydney?" She slammed a small scrap of paper down on the table before the startled CIA agent and continued to rant, "I cannot believe you would be so callous as to blatantly disrespect me like this! You are the vilest, the most arrogant person I've ever—"

"Excuse me, Ms. Reed," Jack interrupted, anger boiling beneath his calm veneer as he stood, "but what right do you have to come in here and accuse my daughter of anything? She has done nothing but try to aid you in whatever way she can—"

"Oh, please, Jack; don't feed me that bull. Sydney has been nothing but a thorn in my side since the day she rose from the dead!"

"Well, excuse me for living!"

"Technically, she didn't rise from the dead, 'cause she was never dead, and if she really _did,_ she'd be like one of those ugly-lookin' zombie guys from _Dawn of the Dead_ and I couldn't close my eyes for a week after seeing that one, but I've been sleeping fine since Sydney got back and she's as pretty as ever, so—"

"Don't pick a fight with everyone, Lauren."

"Stop taking her bloody side, Michael! I'm your _wife_; you should be defending me when she says such slanderous sh—"

"My daughter has absolutely no reason to say anything about you, because obviously your remarks say everything about your character. . . ."

"I can speak for myself, Dad."

"Daddy won't save you now, little girl—"

"Alright, THAT'S ENOUGH!" The room immediately fell silent as all attention focused on Shadow at the front of the room. Her usually smooth brow knotted in anger as she took control of the crowded room. She pointed to Marshall and commanded, _"You_ need to shut up—" at Jack "—_you_ need to tell the truth for once in your life—" at Weiss "—_you_ need to stop leaving notes on my desk—" at Sydney and Vaughn "—_you_ need to learn communication skills—" at Lauren "—and _you_ need to speak American."

Shay sat down with a clunk and a large, satisfied huff in Dixon's usual seat.

Sobered by Shadow's outburst, the other agents quickly found their seats around the tables, and Dixon took a place near the monitor. "Sydney," he began, as if loathe to bring up the topic again lest a riot ensue, "will you read the note you left Lauren?"

"I didn't leave this woman anything!" she retorted indignantly, not deigning to touch the paper in front of her. "Especially not something _slanderous_, considering that 'libel' is the one that's written down. . . ."

"Just read it. Please," Dixon pleaded, one second away from pounding his head against the monitor.

With a begrudging sneer, she pulled the paper towards her and read, _"'Not happy with your field rating — or lack thereof? Come to conference room 4G for help! Although I've seen your evasive driving skills, and there's—'"_

"'—_Not much hope left for you,'"_ Shadow finished, the sadistic grin lacing across her face yet again. "Yep, that was me. Not Sydney. Way to jump to uninformed, unsupported, _stupid_ conclusions, Agent Reed. That's the first quality the United States looks for in its field-rated agents. _Great_ job supporting my note, there."

Had it been any other agent — perhaps barring only Jack — Sydney thought Lauren would have lunged at her. As it was, the NSC liaison dug her nails into her palms and pursed her lips to the size of a period.

"Anyways," Shadow transitioned, peering up at Dixon, "what's this briefing about?"

Their director frowned severely at the new agent but continued all the same. "Analysts are still sifting through some codes in association with the specs acquired last week. While they're making headway, they're nowhere near there. So, in the meantime, we've decided to follow a different lead." A picture of Mikhail Polhov popped onto the screen beside him. "Vaughn said Polhov recognized Sydney as her Covenant alias Julia Thorne. Since she cannot remember her time as a double inside the Covenant and never reported to Kendall about seeing Polhov, we have questions about whether his connection with her can be useful or not." He paused and Shay stood, signaling the beginning of the assignments.

"We can't go in with you as Julia Thorne," she explained matter-of-factly, "because last time, frankly, didn't work out so well. So I was wondering if we could play off of any possible fear of you Polhov may have when _not_ thinking Julia's there to do the Covenant's dirty work." She stared at Sydney through narrowed eyes, as if she still formed the decision in her head. Sydney returned the glare blankly, trying to hide the fact that if she had to go on another mission with Vaughn this soon, she just might scream.

Either Shadow ignored her or she did not care, because she reached behind the monitor and extracted six black folders and began tossing them at agents. "Again, everyone's going on this mission." Lauren did well to keep her groan to herself. "Marshall, Lauren: you're on comms. We'll be using the crystalline pieces Marshall developed for the mission in Kiev. Make them extra-strength this time, okay?" He nodded vigorously.

"The thing is," she stated, pacing between the two tables, "Sydney can go on the mission, but she can't be seen. Don't worry, Barbie—" Lauren cringed under her glare "—I'll make sure the bane of your existence still plays a part.

"Polhov owns a library in Russia — obviously a cover for something, but you don't need to worry 'bout that now — and our intel says he'll be paying a visit very soon. So Jack and Weiss will be on outdoor surveillance. Syd and Vaughn will be indoors . . . doin' _their thang_—" Lauren again shifted uncomfortably "— and I'll be one of Julia Thorne's friends, Kristi Maple. She's an exchange student from NYU whose identity I decided to steal for the day." She stopped pacing in the middle of the conference room and glanced at each agent in turn. "Any questions? No? Good. Wheels up to St. Petersburg in two hours. You're dismissed."

Lauren rose and immediately headed for Sydney, but Shadow cut her off, falling into stride beside Sydney and leading her down the scenic route to their desks. While Sydney remained grateful, she could not hold back her tempestuous confusion. "Why did you write Lauren that note?"

"Fun, huh?" Shay remarked wryly, grinning like a lioness reflecting on the kill.

Sydney shook her head. "Not when it frames me. You must have known she would think it was me."

"Hey, she's the one who blew up the balloon. Is it my fault I popped it?" She stopped walking as she saw Weiss approaching her desk with a piece of paper. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have someone's dreams to crush. Enjoy your cover, by the way."

As the strange agent stalked off, Sydney moved to one side of the bustling hallway and opened her dossier for the first time. Its contents made bile rise in her throat.

Alias: Tasya Yagoudin, twenty-eight.

Grad student recently transferred from Moscow.

Fiancé: Yury Mishenka, alias Michael Vaughn.

What she could only assume was Shadow's writing scrawled hurriedly: _'BTW: They like kissing. A lot.'_

For once, she resided not in a dream but remained in reality. Windowless, whitewashed walls surrounded her on every side. The bland smear of existence common in Communistic ideology congealed in every nook of this post-Stalin library. Instead of the rich, luxuriant libraries filled with cathedral ceilings stocked to the steeple with embossed, leather-bound books in first and second editions common in Moscow and some of the cities west of the Ural Mountains, Sydney faced low, grey ceilings and bookcases that ended a good foot below the cinderblocks and books with plastic covers that crinkled when touched. Wooden, unpadded chairs mingled with round, wooden tables near electrical outlets and broadband ports: the only modern improvement to the entire building.

Sydney and Vaughn cloistered themselves around one of these ports, craftily concealed from view with stacks of books and their laptops. In her long, wavy, brown and highlighted wig, she jotted down notes in Russian while he typed an essay on the Kyoto Accord. He took frequent typing breaks to highlight in research articles and textbooks and to run his fingers through his black hair.

Suddenly, a hand alighted upon the top of her thigh, nearly making her jump. Vaughn leaned on it and whispered in her ear, "I have no idea what I'm writing. Can speak Russian just fine, but reading it . . . Not so much."

"Well, when we get back to the States," she responded, hiding her wry smile in her notebook, "maybe you should invest in a Russian dictionary. Or lessons."

"Only if you give them to me," he replied automatically. They both ceased moving and looked at one another, tension spilling into the age-old chasm between them. Both thought the same regretful thoughts, and he ducked his head shamefully as he amended, "Sorry. I'll get back to my essay now."

Both continued to labor away until twin dialogue boxes popped up on their laptops: _'Shadow in play. Stand by for transmission.' _Being on Polhov's turf, they deemed it too risky to utilize normal communication with the States and their backup, so Marshall modified not only the comm links, but also provided the op-tech laptops designed to transmit to an off-site CIA-controlled server through which Sydney and Vaughn could communicate with those not on point. The crystalline comm pieces, however, still posed a problem. Since they were still in the early stages of development, they could only work static-free if porous objects stood between the links, and even then distance was limited to one hundred yards. So as long as Shadow stayed within sight, they would be all right.

That thought did not comfort Sydney as she reached up and twisted the diamond stud in the cartilage of her ear, turning on her comm piece. Vaughn tweaked his own white speck as he pretended to tug at his earlobe in thought.

A pale woman rounded the corner of the entrance hallway, blonde hair tied behind her head in a loose bun. The sound of her rustling, knee-length black skirt and heels made it all the way across the library to where the couple sat, and she readjusted the pair of square faux frames perched at the end of her small nose. Her calf-length suit jacket gave the allusion of height as well as an air of importance. A crystal leaf necklace caught the light and glimmered from the hollow of her throat.

The touch of red resided in the pinstripes traversing her ensemble.

Clutching two books to her chest, she readjusted her messenger bag as she paused to talk to the receptionist, her countenance pleasant for once. The librarian hesitated, a look of uncertainty passing over her face before she nodded towards the agents' end of the library.

Shay left the woman without a thank-you, and as she strode confidently towards the couple, her free hand floated up to her neck and twisted the crystal gem, turning on her own comm link. Halting to read the description on one of the stacks, Shadow scolded without moving her lips, "I don't see you _kissing. . . ."_

She disappeared down an aisle.

Sydney sighed audibly and glanced at her partner out of the corner of her eye. He peered at her as well. The same thought ran through each of their minds simultaneously. _'If it's for the mission . . .'_ His typing ceased as one of his hands gravitated towards her own, and she merely stared as the shadow engulfed her—

"He's here." Shadow's low voice broke each of them from their trance, and as inconspicuously as possible, they surveyed the entrance. Polhov, his neck fat spilling over his black turtleneck and grey suit, leaned against the receptionist's counter and chatted pleasantly. Her face drawn in seriousness, the librarian pointed towards the stacks where Shadow disappeared, and Polhov followed her finger in interest. Sydney ducked her head beneath the table under the pretense of rooting around in her laptop case. Vaughn tapped her lower back when the man slipped in between the bookcases, and they considerably quieted their movements as they listened on their comms intently.

Just as she returned to taking notes full force, she heard a crash twofold, once on the comm and simultaneously twenty-five feet away. If Sydney strained, she could see the two between the shelves. They both stooped and picked up papers as if they had knocked into each other. "Sorry," Polhov said in Russian, "I should watch where I'm walking." He handled a worn paperback and held it up for scrutiny. "Dostoyevsky? Good choice, but Tolstoy's better."

"Neither of them can compare to Hawthorne or Twain," Shadow responded in the same language, slightly less-than-perfect accent. She grabbed the book and stuffed it into her bag.

Polhov smiled in bemusement as he offered his hand to help her up. "You are American," he commented in English, thick accent making his words nearly indistinguishable.

Shay nodded coyly, blushing and ducking her head as she readjusted the should strap. "How could ya tell?" She asked, New York lilt peppering her words. "I'm studying abroad this semester. I'm Kristi Maple." Her hand shot out from her side to shake his own. "And you must be Mikhail Polhov. I've heard so much about you! We gotta talk."

He allowed her to lead him to a table at the head of the aisle, still in slightly obstructed view of Sydney and Vaughn. She sat down her belongings and took his hands in hers confidentially. Her eager smile almost split her face as she gazed directly into his eyes. "I actually came here today in the hopes that you'd be here. I've been dying to meet you since, like, forever. Julia said you could help me if I had any problems and, well, it seems like I may be in over my head with a certain bookie—"

"Julia?" Polhov repeated sharply, snatching back his hands and peering at her warily. "Julia who? I do not know who you speak of."

"Sorry." Shay chuckled nervously, rolling her eyes at herself. "You must know a million Julias. I'll be more specific: Julia Thorne."

His face warped into a spectrum of hatred and malice, and his hand flicked almost imperceptibly. "Julia Thorne is no friend of mine," he said, voice dangerously low.

Movement from the entrance hallway garnered Sydney's attention, and Sydney gripped Vaughn's arm tightly. "He alerted the guards with some kind of silent alarm," she whispered hurriedly, intending both Vaughn and Shadow to hear. "We gotta get out of here _now._" She typed, "Beta Team, meet us at the front entrance." She and Vaughn began packing as quickly as possible, still listening to Shay and Polhov. But when their voices suddenly stopped, the two agents raced through the stacks only to find their previous table vacant.

"Shadow? _Shadow?"_ Sydney whispered harshly, frantically searching for a secondary door out of this section of the library. Vaughn's hands skittered across the drywall, trying to find any hint of a secret portal, and at last, his fingers alighted upon a large crack, which he began to pry open.

The receptionist again pointed in their direction, and Sydney began aiding her partner. Just before the security guards rounded the end of the bookcase, the heavy door swung open, and the two agents slipped inside.

Pitch black surrounded them. Both the floor and walls felt cold and wet, and Sydney assumed they were in some sort of secret passageway left over from the Communist era. Shadow's words immediately repeated themselves in the back of her mind: _' . . . obviously a cover for something, but you don't need to worry 'bout that now. . . .'_ But she did! It was a BIG worry now! Sydney took a deep breath and swallowed her anger, reaching out to her right, blindly searching for the nearest wall as she felt Vaughn strike out to his left to do the same.

Just as she found it, though, the ground gave way, and she plummeted down a set of stairs, elbows, knees, and head scraping against the jagged cement steps. Vaughn stage-whispered after her, and she gingerly pulled herself to her feet. "Well," she croaked, the darkness swirling as she tried to stem the blood from a rip in her knee, "I think I found the stairs."

Vaughn rushed down to meet her, stumbling over her when he reached the bottom. "Sorry," he apologized sheepishly, grabbing an injured elbow and receiving a hiss in return. "Do you think there's a light switch nearby? Or a flashlight in your bag?"

"Now why the hell would there be a flashlight in my—" she halted, her hand stumbling upon a round, plastic cylinder with a button "—bag?" Shadow packed the bags; she knew what Polhov really used the building for. Of course she would prepare for all possible events! "Okay, let's go," Sydney prompted, extracting both the light source and her gun. "They can't be too far ahead of us."

This time the walls positively excreted moisture, signaling they were, in fact, underground. Sydney swung the flashlight back and forth in front of her, trying to see any other hidden objects that might be barring their path. Vaughn kept pace at her side with his gun drawn and ready. The hallway began to bend, and at its pinnacle stood a large steel door without a handle. The two agents glanced at each other in the semi-darkness, communicating fears and reassurances without words.

At the same instant, they struck away from the wall and kicked in the heavy door.

It skidded across the wet concrete and only came to rest as it nudged a motionless body. The harsh light obstructed her vision for a moment, but as her surroundings faded back in, her shoulders slumped in incredulity.

Shadow stood in the middle of the round room surrounded by at least five incredibly still bodies, her face and clothes smeared with blood and dirt. She dusted off her hands as she picked up two of the men's guns and stepped over strewn arms and legs. "You guys missed all the fun. Sorry." Smiling brightly at the other two agents, she let out a loud breath. "I tried to tell you guys I had things under control, but Marshall hasn't gotten these comms right yet. Oh well. Everyone still had a good time, right? Okay, let's split. The door at the end of the hall should lead to an outside set of stairs. We can find the van from there."

At first, Sydney and Vaughn followed Shadow without question, merely exchanging confused looks. But when that door at the end of the hall required a ten-digit password, and Shadow by-passed it without technical assistance, Sydney could hold her confoundment no longer. "Why didn't you tell us what this place was used for?" she whispered harshly, throwing glances over her shoulder to make sure they were not being followed.

Shadow rolled her eyes as the keypad beeped and the door swung open. "I told you, you don't have to worry about it. If you had just stayed upstairs and made out like I told you to, he wouldn't be dirty, you wouldn't be bloody, and I wouldn't have to baby-sit your sorry asses." Sydney glared at the back of her skull, knowing Shadow would notice, possibly even call her on it. "The KGB built it to interrogate prisoners during the Cold War. But you probably already guessed that. Your mom used to own this place before Polhov took over. And I used to work here."

Vaughn's gaze immediately shot to his partner, but she merely ducked her head and tried to ignore Shadow's news. It was just another revelation, just another bad thing her mother did. Not surprising, right?

But it hurt all the same.

The three emerged into daylight, squinting in the unobstructed lumination, and Shadow called Weiss and Jack over the crystal comms, ignoring Sydney's labored breathing and the sparkle of tears in her eye.

~*~*~*~

"—And that's why they installed wire fences around the Eiffel Tower. Not suicide jumpers: _me."_

Shadow's listeners gasped in astonishment. "Are you kidding me?" Weiss exclaimed, almost completely forgetting about his beer. "That's the best story I've ever heard! Aside from Mike's first college frat party, but we'll let that slide."

"Tell another, Shay," Sydney urged, leaning forward in her chair hopefully.

The strange agent slid even further down into her chair and rested one leg on an unused table while she toyed with a bottle cap. She glanced down at the shiny object and smiled slyly, obviously thinking of another time and place. "Nah," she answered humbly, "you don't want to hear another one of my war stories. You've probably already heard them a hundred times. Although there _was_ a pretty good one from Greece when I was with MI-5. But Barbie doesn't look drunk enough to enjoy it yet, so it'll have to wait for another day. Don't you know how to get your woman drunk, Vaughn? I thought every man knew that."

Vaughn laughed shortly — merely to appease Shadow — while the woman sitting on his knee huffed indignantly. After the mission, Shadow commanded them to follow her to a bar she knew (no questions about it), everything on her. So Vaughn, Lauren, Weiss, Sydney, and Shadow sat around a round table in a surprisingly well lit bar and pool hall, trading "war stories" and the like. Most of the proletariat clearly avoided them, tending to congregate around the darker, smokier pool tables. Even the waitress kept herself at a distance: if anyone wanted a refill, they either rose and asked, or Shadow yelled for one from her slouched position.

So far, their conversation gravitated toward the light-hearted and comfortable side, but Sydney knew deep in her stomach that it would not stay that way for long. Shadow would see to it that everyone felt uneasy at least once. But despite the charged atmosphere, Sydney was having a surprisingly good time. Yes, Lauren and Vaughn radiated their coupleness, but the combination of Weiss's humour, Shadow's disdain, and her beer created a pro-happiness aura. As long as the majority of the group sided with her, there was no reason why she should randomly remember she had a briefing to read or report to file. Sydney vowed she would stay as long as the general mood stayed non-icky.

Shadow called over her shoulder for another basket of peanuts, and when they arrived, Weiss dug out a handful and coaxed, "Come on, Shay. There's got to be something else you haven't told us yet."

"Oh, there's a hell of a lot of stuff I haven't shared," she scoffed, swinging her sweating beer bottle by its thin neck. Vaughn, Weiss, and Sydney all peered at her expectantly, and she tacked on, "But that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you, either. A girl's gotta keep _some_ secrets. Especially when they deal with the national security of several nations." She glanced meaningfully at Sydney but left her statement at that.

"Why does she have to be so cryptic, Michael?" Lauren stage-whispered, not realizing everyone could hear her.

Without lifting her eyes from the peanut basket on the table, Shadow replied in an Oxford British accent, voice dangerously low, "That's how you get yourself killed dearie." Her gaze lifted and drilled into the blonde agent, and Sydney felt ice frost the hairs on her arms.

To dispel the icicles, Weiss cleared his throat sharply and shifted in his backwards chair, letting his hands and beer dangle off the back. "Have you ever had a partner?"

The giant pendulum swing of the conversation stopped, interrupting itself, and began doing the Macarena. Shay did not move, per se, but the realignment of her chin and the way her fingers faltered around her bottle signaled that he had hit a nerve. After that split second of hesitation, she continued on, but the imperfection had shown. They all became interested.

"I did once. Only once," she began simply. "I trained with Special Forces throughout high school, and my freshman year of college, they transferred me to England where I worked with MI-5 as the FBI liaison. My partner was Riley Blankenship, but we called him Rey. He had a little friend named Jules that kept hanging around and making lame comments. He would follow us when we went out and snarked at me in this low British accent. Anyway, Rey and I got a little closer than either government would like and, long story short, when we were on a recon mission in Russia, the KGB captured him. They tortured him, trying to get him to reveal me because the mission was still active, and I was still in play. But as we were . . . _involved . . . _he felt the need to protect me. So they killed him. I recovered his bruised and bloody body the next day.

"I haven't exactly felt the need to have another partner." To the inexperienced ear, her voice remained smooth throughout her mini-speech, but to Sydney, the poisonous venom edging Shadow's tone spoke volumes.

'_It all makes sense now,'_ Sydney though with a tinge of sadness. _'Well, not everything, but a lot more than before.'_

Shadow suddenly smiled and glugged the remainder of her beer. Gesturing at the only couple with her empty bottle, she ordered, "Get up off your asses and get us another round. If you get a little lightheaded on the way, Barbie, just put your head between your knees." Her intonation implied a sexual pun; Lauren shot the agent a sharp look, and Vaughn pretended to ignore her while Weiss and Sydney sniggered behind their hands. Shay shifted in her seat to face Weiss, shutting out Sydney in the process. "So . . ." she began, averting her eyes to a stain on the table, "are you going to stop following me around like a lost dog?"

He raised an eyebrow, still conscious of Sydney's presence. "What do you mean?"

"All guys who get involved with me end up dead. Aren't you afraid that you'll wind up in a ditch without your head?"

Sydney smiled to herself as Shay stared down her friend. This was his test. In her mind, she crossed her fingers for the oblivious Weiss. For his sake, she hoped he would not be stupid _('for once in his life')_ and answer _sensibly._

But she need not have worried. Weiss's other eyebrow raised, and he asked without hesitation, "Why would I? I'm a big boy; I can take care of myself. I can weigh risks, and I've weighed them." Perhaps the deciding factor was when he returned her glare pound for pound, lightning bolt for lightning bolt. Even Sydney would not have attempted such a feat. _'Wow. Weiss must have grown some balls since the time his last girlfriend beat him up.'_

Finally, Shadow nodded and broke the staredown, possibly because Vaughn and Lauren were returning with yet another round of beers. Before they broke into earshot, though, Shay shifted in her seat yet again, leaning across the table briefly to whisper, "You pass," before slouching again. As each set down a tray of five long-necks and five mugs respectively, Shay scoffed, "God, took you long enough, Barbie. What, did you get lost in the tables and chairs? Or did you really have to put your head between your knees?"

Lauren pouted huffily, and Sydney smiled.

Hope you enjoyed this one! Like I mentioned in my profile, my website is now up and running! _Shadow_ is up there, but resist the temptation! When I'm done here, then go reread it. ;) Reviews tell me what you like --- and don't like.

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	5. Chapter 5: Cafe Ombre

**This Chapter:** Mysterious nighttime phone calls never lead to squealing happiness. Let's see where Shadow's leads....

**Suggested Soundtrack:** "Wake" by Linkin Park, "You Had Time" by Ani DiFranco, "Your Star" and "Solitude" by Evanescence

**Author's Note: **_Ombre_ means 'shadow' in French. Maybe that helps.

* * *

**Chapter Five: **_**Café Ombre**_

The phone call of the dead always came between two and four in the morning.

She read that in a short story somewhere, but she hated acknowledging the statement's truth. That was why, even if she could not even _think_ about sleeping at any other time, she would force herself to lose consciousness for just those two hours — she asked nothing more, and on those nights, received nothing less. Except for drunk twenty-somethings, no one _sane_ wandered the streets at that time of night; the darkness just did not feel normal. Thus whenever the land line rang between those hours, she would let it trill one more cry than normal, just to make sure the caller was not anxious enough to hang up and call her cell.

Too many 'phone calls of the dead' had she received _not_ to be wary.

2:46. She remembered it even though she was only six at the time — _'two, four, six. I just learned to count by twos in school! Mommy will be so proud of me...' 'No she won't, because she's never coming back—'_ She remembered being slightly disappointed as her clock switched over to 2:47. She remembered hearing her nanny whispering in the hallway — _'probably talking on the phone. Maybe it's Mommy and Daddy checking on me during their beautiful fairy tale dinner! I _knew_ they wouldn't forget their princess.' 'You, little princess, were never supposed to be born—'_ Suddenly, she heard a thump outside her room followed by the shrillest scream Sydney had heard before or since. God why, Nanny kept shouting, whywhywhywhywhy! — _'Who's dead? Goldie?! I didn't mean to give her so much food; she just looked really hungry. I'm sorry. Mommy and I will have to give her a good funeral.' ''Fraid your mom's going in the ground first, honey—'_

3:37. After a long and draining flight — layovers, delays, lost luggage: ah, the joys of working for a Black Ops division of the CIA! — all she wanted was to soak in the tub until her toes shriveled and then climb into bed next to her fiancé. So as not to disturb Danny, she left her bag and heels near the door, but upon a cursory survey of her apartment, the chaos tackled her senses, and practically she tripped through the house taking stock of the damage, not even noticing the absence of his breathing from the bedroom. The rest of that memory was filled with red smeared over white and brown porcelain and eyes that _looked_ like porcelain and silent screams strong enough to _shatter_ porcelain. This counted as a phone call because not only did she call paramedics to the scene, but she had to phone Danny's mother in England — the almost-but-now-never-will-be mother-in-law — at 3:59.

Hell, she called Kendall from Hong Kong somewhere around three in the morning Pacific time. Now _that_ was the ultimate phone call of the dead.

But despite her eventful past, despite her best efforts, she could not fall asleep. Perhaps it was the alcohol from the night before somehow persisting in her system. Perhaps it was the pained look Vaughn shot her during their last briefing of the day when Dixon passingly mentioned Sark's lab. Whatever it was, sleep evaded her like a sieve trying to catch light.

So she left her bed to pad over to her computer desk, grab the chair, and drag it over to the window. It looked over a square of cement (a 'patio') and what little greenery time and her landlord afforded her. Since she now lived near the beach, obtrusive neon lights rarely invaded her space, and the strong, eerie light of a full moon filtered through her filmy curtains. But her eyes remained glued to her illuminated clock at the bedside, bracing herself as the little green numbers morphed to read exactly two o'clock.

As she placed her warm feet on the cool ledge of the window, she contemplated turning off her cell phone and even unplugging the land line, CIA random middle-of-the-night calls be damned. But when her thumb hovered over the power button, it began to ring shrilly, nearly startling her out of her skin. The screen read 'unknown,' so of course (she hoped) it could only be one person—

"Shadow?"

The agent did not acknowledge her, only whispering, "Your land line will ring in three minutes. Don't hang up when it does. Just listen." Then she herself hung up.

Sighing, Sydney finally turned off her cell phone and slid it across the desk to rest next to her purse. It was not a phone call from the dead, but it might as well have been; her insides chilled and her upper lip curled into a snarl. _'It's too late and I'm too sleep-deprived to play any of her games.'_

'_Hey,'_ the other side of her consciousness countered, _'at least it's not another ballroom dream. At least you don't have to hear Vaughn whisper into your ear as he—'_

Somehow, the ring seemed shriller at night.

Again, she nearly jumped when the phone next to her on the desk called out to her, echoing in the large, empty room. She merely sat for a moment, watching the green light flicker in time with the high-pitched note, and waited until after the fourth ring, assuring against a _real_ phone call from the dead; this person was a minute early. Pressing the speaker button, she answered, "Hello?"

Silence responded.

Letting out her breath in a huff, she shifted impatiently in her chair and gritted out, "Look, I am in _no_ mood to play your stupid little games, Shadow—"

"It's me."

Oh.

Vaughn.

Well then . . .

"Do you know what day it is?"

She froze as the realization washed over her, dropping her insides to within a few degrees of absolute zero. How did he still remember? _Why_ did he still remember? She thought the day had already passed into antiquity, already drained out of popular knowledge. She doubted even the CIA still remembered the date, let alone any agent that worked within the walls of its buildings.

"Four years ago today we took down SD-6 and the Alliance," she answered with a sigh. "It was probably the best day of my life; how could I forget it?" She emitted a pregnant silence, as the words she desperately needed to say piled up in her mouth, creating a complicated and unbreakable web. Finally, she stopped trying, and the silence dissipated into white noise.

"It's number one on my list, too." The nearly undetectable sharp intake of breath in the pause at the end of his statement suggested he regretted what he said . . . but not enough to take it back.

There were times when she _dreamed_ of this type of admission. It validated her long-suppressed feelings and comforted her — if just for a moment — to know that somewhere in his heart, they paralleled. She was not hoping in vain. She would not spend her life secretly pining away for a married man. Someday somehow something would come along and make order out of chaos and set everything back to the way it was supposed to be. Right now, they stood at a stalemate, and this admission would instigate resetting the board.

But by now it just hurt. He had reneged on his vow and hurt her too much for her to take anything his subconscious spun her way. Too many times had he opened his mouth to say something and did not. Too many times had he thrown her a pained look and did nothing to follow it up. She _wanted_ to believe him more than life itself, but for the sake of her heart, her future, her _sanity_, she simply could not.

"Vaughn." The word came out as a breathy sigh as she slid farther down into her seat. "Please," she whispered, wishing her voice was more stable: the crack hid just around the corner, and she needed time to steel herself against it. Time that she obviously would not receive. "Don't do this. Don't bring _that_ up right now. In fact, I think it's better if _that_ were brought up never again, because _that_ hurts too much to even think about." She talked herself to a spot on the spectrum where she could not tell what _that_ was anymore. Continuing to stare outside, a light rain began to fall, dotting the pseudo-patio beyond the window. Her cheeks felt like that cement.

Vaughn sighed through the phone, a knowing sigh that signified he wanted her to look past the fact that they probably should not be talking about _that. _"Syd, I just want to celebrate the anniversary with a friend, with someone who remembers what it was like to be there. Lauren doesn't care."

She rolled her eyes. "Nor should she. I don't even want her to _touch_ that memory. Look, I don't know where to _begin_ with the inappropriateness of this call."

"Then don't!"

"But Vaughn!" she cried incredulously, letting her forehead fall into her hands. "I don't know how to be _just friends_ with you! I don't know how to be around you and not feel the way I used to. And I don't think I can try anymore." The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them, but after they laid out in the open, she felt surprisingly relieved. Darkness enveloped her and bolstered her spirits even as the rain splattered harder on the cement and Vaughn nearly stopped breathing over the phone. "Since Shadow cleared me already, I think we should each give serious though to one of us leaving the L.A. office."

The sound did not disappear. Her heart did not stop beating. Her world did not stop spinning. In fact, the suggestion felt extremely... _normal._ Almost too much so.

He took a rattling breath, and she practically heard him choosing his words in his mind. As the clock on her nightstand flipped over another minute and another and another, she began not only to think that he hung up, but that she should probably retract her statement, laugh it off as some late-night, sleep-deprived delusion. Because the more she thought about it, the more the prospect of living a life without Vaughn included in the equation _at all_ seemed, in short, bad. Really bad.

'_Please, Vaughn, for once in your life be able to deny me something. Do what you've always done and see through me like Waterford crystal. Please. Just . . . Say . . . No . . .'_

"Sydney," he began, voice filtered through emotional cheesecloth so it came out a whisper, "when I said I didn't regret moving on, I wasn't lying. With the track I was on, I would have killed myself if I hadn't."

'_Damn.'_

"But that doesn't mean the feelings aren't there anymore."

She did not think it was possible, but _then_ the world stopped turning. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that despite everything, I—"

"Where's your wife?" She had no idea what was making her lips move when possibly the most important words of her life were coming out of his. "Why are you calling me in the middle of the night when your wife is probably in the next room?"

The moment effectively gone, he sighed heavily again. "She's sleeping. And I couldn't."

"Well, I suggest you try again," she countered, leaning toward the disconnect button. Pausing, she bit her lip in thought as the neon read 2:47. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She hung up.

~*~*~*~

"—And that's how I got a black eye and found five dollars." Shadow smiled slyly and rested her hands on her hips, not having pockets in the modified pinstripe skirt that showed more thigh than a plucked chicken. Leaning back against the wall next to the water cooler, the buckles on her boots clinked together as she took a sip of... whatever she had in her travel mug.

Weiss rocked back and forth on his heels. "Why do you like to end stories like that?" he asked, coffee mug on the break table forgotten.

She shrugged indifferently. "That way, people who've been zoning out during my story feel stupid for missing such a good one when they tune in again at the end. And no, I don't take encore requests," she added, nodding to Vaughn as he slipped through the door to the break room where she, Sydney, and Weiss had been for the past five minutes, chatting amicably about nothing in particular.

Neither Shadow nor Sydney mentioned the late-night phone calls of the previous night (morning?), but Shay avoided it too much to be discreet about it. Sydney did not know to what extent Shadow involved herself, but she would bet her last remaining minutes of sleep on the fact that the agent played a major role in the proceedings. Which begged the question: if she avoided the subject thus far, did she have even more up her sleeve . . . ?

But then her eyes locked with Vaughn's, and all thought fled her mind like birds before a hurricane. The lower half of his face looked darker than the top, though the area around his eyes almost made his head look like a giant Oreo cookie. The hollow cavities of his cheeks stood out in sharp relief like permanent dimples. She brought a hand up to her own cheeks, self-consciously feeling her hard cheekbones beneath tight skin, and she vowed to eat a full meal sometime that day and get more than two hours' sleep that night. A noble vow, but one she made before and not kept.

He had not slept the rest of the night, either.

Shadow motioned him over, but he shook his head slowly, propping the door open with his knee. "Dixon wants us in the briefing room. Something to do with Polhov and a ship."

He narrowed his eyes as Shay clapped enthusiastically. "Yay! He took my suggestion!"

Sydney could feel everyone in the room sigh in resignation. _'Great. Just great. Here we go again.'_

All the usual suspects filed into the conference room and took their normal places. Lauren wheeled with her a small suitcase, explaining upon one of Shadow's patented jeers that she had her monthly debrief in Washington, D.C., scheduled for later that day. Shay nodded sarcastically and stood beside the monitor, crossing her arms over a sleeveless black and red turtleneck.

Dixon strode in and clicked on the screen immediately, exhibiting what looked like boat schematics. "It appears that Polhov doesn't like Julia Thorne as much as we could have hoped, owing to how he treated a mere friend of Julia's. So that route is exhausted. But we still have the schematics for the weapons transfer, and we'll have to go back to the drawing board. Shadow?"

She stepped immediately between the two tables and smiled proudly. "Boys and girls, today we'll be taking over a ship." The picture on the screen changed to a small port filled with ships of all shapes and sizes from sailboats to yachts to . . . a small barge. "Polhov owns a harbor in the south of France. He supplies the locals with American goods, so no one questions the barge that shows up from time to time. That's where the schematics say the Covenant's shipment will depart tomorrow night, and that's where we'll highjack the barge. The security presence will be minimal at best, but Kendall has agreed to provide us with a back-up team so we can do this as quietly as possible. Therefore, Sydney, Vaughn, and I will head directly for the ship and take out the crew while Weiss and Lauren will secure the perimeter—"

"I'm not going." Lauren gestured to her suitcase pointedly. "I'll be in D.C."

"All right." Shadow's lack of comment sent up a red flag in Sydney's mind, and she narrowed her eyes in confusion at her father across the room, who merely shrugged. "Fine by me."

"I'll go in her place," Jack volunteered, broad face showing no hint of emotion.

She cocked her head to the side as if considering the proposal. "You know you'll be under my command, Mister Bristow?" He nodded shortly. "All right. That's settled. We'll brief with the team in-country. Wheels up at eighteen-hundred hours. You're dismissed. Oh, and you—" she pointed at Lauren, who glanced up like a deer about to be intimately acquainted with the wrong end of an SUV "—my office. Ten minutes. Or your 'debrief in Washington' will be the least of your problems."

Weiss and Sydney connected gazes from opposite ends of the table. _'Lauren's "test." Man, I wish Shadow were selling tickets. . . .'_ Sydney tried to suppress a smile as she strolled out of the conference room towards her desk, intent on memorizing the dossier sitting underneath her keyboard. As she slid into her desk chair (carefully, as her ankle was better, but not completely healed), she could not keep her mind from wandering, first to the small, barren room where Shadow no doubt held Vaughn's wife. What was the point? Even though the thought of Shadow's unmitigated bitchiness directed solely towards Lauren made Sydney want to squeal with excitement, she really saw no clear-cut reason for it, other than the _temporary_ joy. At the rate the investigation progressed, the Covenant would be knocking down the CIA's front door with five hundred pounds of C-4 before they even narrowed down the list of moles to the Top Ten People Who Could (Possibly) Want to Kill Everyone. She knew it was not her place to second guess her methods — particularly when she did not know _exactly_ what they were — but Shadow moved miles too slow for Sydney's taste.

Second, she thought of Vaughn's phone call.

Yes, yet again.

His words — or lack thereof — would not leave her mind. How could speeches uttered in the comfort of darkness differ so greatly when the sun rose? How could intentions, so unmistakable and lucid and encouraging during a time notorious for spying and lying, thieving and deceiving, morph into perfect opposites with the mere application of natural lumination? If one set of standards, of emotions existed for one time of day and not another, then she wanted no part of either.

She gave up.

She wanted out of this duality.

She wanted one uniform standard operations procedure that she could rely on without fail—

"Syd?" She turned around to see Shadow, cheeks flushed, rushing towards her across the bullpen. Pulling to a halt beside the female agent's desk, Shay folded her arms across her chest and grinned. "Lunch at noon at Café Ombre. I might be a little late. You know, what with the torturing and all. . . ." With a wink, she disappeared the way she came in.

Staring after her with furrowed brows, any number of possibilities ran through her mind. The logical thing to do: give up. There was no figuring out Shadow, especially when she did not want one to. Sydney mentally shrugged and turned back to her mounting workload. But another agent rushed her desk, nearly sweeping the monitor off the surface. She glanced at Weiss's heavily breathing form in consternation. "What, is this Run Everywhere Day and no one told me? God! And I already missed Today's a Musical Day."

Weiss frowned heavily but ignored her comment. "Craig is taking bets as to how long Lauren can last in a room alone with Shadow. She even gave us a closed-circuit feed so we can watch! Come on!"

A small smile crept across her lips as she considered the option, but when Vaughn entered the bullpen practically wringing his hands, that phantom grin diluted into a wistful twinge. "No, that's all right. I've got to get down to op-tech anyway. Marshall's expecting me."

"No, he's watching the action with us," he countered, following her gaze. Vaughn caught them looking, nodded, and diverted his path towards op-tech. "Want to come with us now?"

Not hesitating, she answered with a hearty, _"Yes,"_ before trailing off after her friend.

* * *

"Would you like to order, ma'am?"

"No, that's all right. My friend will be here soon. But I will have another tea with lemon, thank you." _'And for the last time, leave me alone!'_

A half hour after Shadow set their meeting time, she had yet to show up. The outdoor café reached the peak of its lunch hour, every table bustling with people engaging in animated conversation. She already drank three cups of tea and went to the bathroom once, knowing she would look just as lonely pretending to check her messages on her cell phone. (Not that she did not try anyway.)

She began to think she was being stood up.

Rolling her eyes in anger, she began rummaging in her purse for a ten-dollar bill in a jumbled attempt to leave gracefully. Instead, she bumped into the maitre-D. "Oh, gosh, I'm so sor—" The words died in her throat as she looked up at Him.

And thus ensued one of those 'oh shit' moments that she hated more than certain people. Her hand froze halfway out of her bag, legs locked in an awkward crouch/squat hybrid. Their eyes zeroed in on each other and, as always, they exchanged a silent conversation.

"_Why the hell are you here?"_

"_Why the hell are _you_ here?"_

"_I asked you first!"_

"_How old are you, five?! God, I can't even eat lunch without—"_

"_Without what? Being bothered by my presence?"_

"_Okay, if that's the way you want it. I was going to say it without the sarcasm, but yeah, you get the basic idea."_

The maitre-D, who by this time looked very nervous indeed, glanced back and forth between the two of them. "Um, is something wrong, miss? 'Cause someone called and said—"

"No, we're all right," Vaughn answered for them, and she struggled not to clench her jaw. "We just haven't talked in a while. Thanks, though." The maitre-D waddled off in a fit of confusion while the two agents turned on one another.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Eating lunch, what do you think!"

"No really, but you can't! I was supposed to have lunch with Shadow here."

"But _I_ was supposed to have lunch with Shadow here. . . ." As they stared at one another, the revelation dawned on them simultaneously, and their eyes widened accordingly. Shoulders slumped, and gazes suddenly found faint stains on the white tablecloth extremely interesting.

"Shadow," she murmured, half disbelieving and half angry. Why did she have to meddle in absolutely everything? Twice in one day! _'Why couldn't she leave my lunch hour alone?'_

His hand glided over the cast-iron chair back beside him, and he leaned on it awkwardly. To the casual observer, Michael Vaughn — a regular suit with irregularly good looks — tried to weasel his way into a lunch with Sydney Bristow — yet another suit who happened to look slightly mentally unstable. Clasping the other hand around the iron for support, he glanced up at her from under his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth evening out to an entirely serious (but not entirely innocent) proposition. "Look, _someone with a grotesque sense of humour_ obviously set us up here. We both have to eat," he reasoned smoothly. "Why can't we eat together? I'll even pay the tip. That poor guy looked like he just saw the beginning of a nuclear holocaust."

"Well, if he just talked to Shadow on the phone, he probably thought he was going to." He pulled out her chair for her before either of them had time to think, and the lubricated conversation they established seconds before dried up completely. Wordlessly, he seated himself across from her, not even pretending to glance at the menu; she was not the only one who lost her appetite.

Despite the over-abundance of downtown Los Angeles noise pollution, her ears seemed temporarily out of service; all that registered in her brain was the harsh, ragged, inandoutandhitch pattern her lungs had fallen into. It boomed in her ears like delayed thunder; it dragged like rocks on a metal cheese grater. But she nearly stopped breathing altogether when she noticed Vaughn's chest rising and falling in time with her own. _('Why am I staring at his chest? Why am I staring at _him?') She held her breath until their patterns fell out of synch.

"So. . . ." He began reading the menu as if it were the latest Stephen King novel, "what are you going to have?"

"I don't know," she replied, just as absorbed in their food choices. "Maybe the chicken. I don't feel like a salad today."

"Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Do you know the specials? Or is the waiter too pissed at us to tell?"

She slammed the menu down onto the table, making the silverware jump. This was stupid, pointless, menial, and . . . _stupid_. Shadow knew the two of them could not partake in small talk; it went against everything they knew. Life was too short to waste time conversing about the weather forecast. And they were one step away from 'don't you think it's a beautiful day?' 'Yeah, the Weather Channel this morning said it would be like this all week. . . .'

"I can't do this, Vaughn," she said before her brain could censor the words. "I don't do small talk."

He laid down his menu on top of hers. "Yeah, I figured," he sighed, sitting back in his seat and staring through his glass of water.

"So what do you want to do, sit here in silence?" Sydney suggested, idly wiping off condensation from her own water glass. "What do you want to talk about?"

Vaughn sighed again without glancing up. "What I want to talk about, you won't want to."

A queasy feeling settled into the pit of her stomach as if she swallowed too much helium. She suddenly felt the urge to move, and she snatched at her water in an altogether ungraceful motion. "How do you know I won't like it?" she answered defensively, her brain entirely disengaging from her mouth. It shouted for her to shut up, excuse herself, and bow out of the restaurant while she still had her head mostly in tact. _'If he's being reserved about it,'_ her mind reasoned, _'you _definitely _won't want to talk about this. Shadow's obviously the one who set you two up today. She wants you to admit something, and now she's got you right where she wants you. Sucker....'_

"Why'd you sleep with him?"

Her first reaction: _'Who the _hell_ is he talking about?'_

The second: _'Why the hell would he care?'_

Maybe she did not hear him right. "Excuse me?" She hoped with every fiber of her being that he meant . . . something else.

Still refusing to grant her a look, he repeated, "Why did you sleep with Simon Walker?"

Being short on sleep — and therefore discretion — and now patience, her thoughts immediately transformed into her spoken words. "It kills you to know I've slept with someone else, doesn't it? To know that another man has seen me the way you used to see me? Well, get used to it, Vaughn. That sick feeling, that feeling like you're going to throw up your heart? Yeah, it doesn't go away. Ever. I feel it every time I see—"

He looked up then, and the depth of pain and hurt she saw there in his eyes utterly overwhelmed her. He was deeply disturbed about the idea of his former lover copulating with a known assassin. (Never 'making love.' _Never._) This was not the look of a merely jealous man; the infidelity struck him deeply.

And the guilt set in. She should not have laid into him; at least his guilt trips were unintentional. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that," she murmured, dropping her gaze to the glass of water by her right hand.

"It's all right." Vaughn stared at the same spot, the pain silently building behind his eyes.

"No, it's not," she sighed, tucking her hair behind an ear. "You asked an honest question, and I'll give an honest answer: I don't know. Vaughn, I can't remember where I lived during those two years. Do you really think I'd remember who I slept with, let alone why?"

"Yes. I remember everyone I've slept with; even the ones I wish I'd forget." Subtext: there could have been _others?_

Scoffing loudly, she rubbed her crown and sat back in her chair, rethinking her approach. She knew how hard it could be to accept the fact that the person one loved willingly slept with someone else. But she did not know how to soften the blow. "What do you want me to say?" she asked, ready to give in. "Do you want me to guess?"

He nodded slowly, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes. She had been doing nothing but guessing since that day in Hong Kong. When Simon practically groped Sydney during their first remembered meeting, she had no idea what to think. Were they lovers? A one-night stand? Merely contacts? Nowhere on the tape she sent to Kendall did she reveal her motives. And when she pressed him for information, he simply answered that as much as she thought the contrary, he did not care about her sex life. At all.

Leaving her to theorize alone.

_Great._

"Knowing me," she began carefully, feeling like she was giving herself a critique, "I did it the first time for information. I went back to maintain my cover as Julia Thorne.

"I know I've never done it before," she rushed, anticipating his question, "and I'll never do it again. But I'd killed my best friend; my other friend most likely bled out in my bathtub; my father was in jail; and you were seeing someone else thinking I was dead. What did I have to lose? If it helped take down the Covenant—"

"Wait," he interrupted, finally looking up from the all-consuming water glass. "How did you know I was seeing Lauren? Weren't you in Italy?"

Gulping back a persistent lump of emotion, she selected her words with pinpoint precision; she still remembered how she felt in the moment Kendall described the revelation. "I didn't believe Kendall when he said you had moved on. So I flew to Los Angeles to find you. When I did, the two of you were going somewhere — I never told him where — and you looked _together_. That was the only reason I agreed to double again. And, presumably, sleep with Walker."

He shook his head deliberately, trying to make room for all the information. "Sydney," he murmured quietly. "I'm sorry you had to see that."

"Don't be. It's my own fault for wanting proof," she replied, biting back a _'you damn well _should _be! I had to see that twice!'_ "And anyway, you've completely moved on, right? No regrets?"

Vaughn did not speak; he merely blinked and stared at the water again.

Her heart jumped for a moment, but her brain wrestled it back under control. Grabbing the glass from his line of sight, she downed a gulp before glancing at her watch and clutching her purse. "Does that answer your question? 'Cause I promised Weiss I'd pick up something from McDonald's. He thinks if he eats the hamburger and not the fries, he'll lose weight." Vaughn assented, barely acknowledging her as she threw a ten on the table to cover her teas and the tip, despite his assurances.

Hurrying through the restaurant towards the door, she noticed a familiar head of black hair sitting atop a black and red turtleneck. She strode over and demanded, "Where the _hell_ were you?"

Shadow looked up innocently. "Right here the whole time. You have no idea how much better the guacamole is in France, which is actually counter-intuitive—"

"Shut up." For once, the agent did as she was told, waiting expectantly for Sydney to continue. She slid into the booth across from Shay. "Why did you set us up like that? Do you _like_ to see us squirm?"

"Yes, but that wasn't the point." Taking a sip from her travel mug, Shadow folded her hands on the table. "You two needed to solve a problem. And since I was the one who brought it up, I figured I better have a hand in solving it."

Sydney frowned in consternation. "What problem? That we've _both_ slept with other people? I don't think that could _ever_ be solved."

The other female agent pursed her lips. "No, not exactly. See, Polhov and Walker? Kinda related. Kinda _father and son._ Polhov wasn't too happy when his son a) slept with a double agent; b) _repeatedly_ slept with a double agent; and c) was killed by that double agent's father." Sydney's eyes widened in disbelief. "Yeah, that could explain why Polhov doesn't exactly want to use cell phone minutes on Julia Thorne."

Trying to process the information, Sydney though it best to just leave Shadow to her meal. Rising and turning to leave, she suddenly stopped. "What happened to Lauren's test?"

A self-satisfied smile brilliantly lit up her face. "She's watching all the Rocky movies in order. I think the torture's going splendidly."

Hope you enjoyed! There's only two more chapters after this, so we're nearing the end.

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	6. Chapter 6: Unmasked

**This Chapter: **[karate chops through door] Does that give you a clue?

**Suggested Soundtrack: **"Sweet Sacrifice" by Evanescence, "Stupify" by Disturbed, "Bodies" by Drowning Pool, "Bleed It Out" by Linkin Park, and "I Have Seen the Rain" by Pink for the end

**Author's Note: **And… climax! Get your minds out of the gutter: I only meant that to sound half as dirty as it did.

* * *

**Chapter Six: Unmasked**

The bullpen even smelled like chaos. As soon as Sydney turned the corner into the cavernous room, three interns in a row fell into her like dominos and bounced off like racquetballs. Stacks of files and piles of clothing seemed to transport themselves through the corridors, and even the people at their desks feverishly did something, darting in between pedestrians on their wheeled chairs. The air popped with the electricity of anxiety and hopeful tension; she could have sworn if she held anything metallic, she would have been worse than dust.

At the nucleus, middle, epicentre of the nebulous tempest stood Shadow in her boots, circus tent pants, and a crimson turtleneck. Her French-braided hair whipped from shoulder to shoulder as she fired commands in every direction. "Rush Mr. Bristow through op-tech; I can brief him myself on the plane. Where's Vaughn? _Still_ getting fitted for his tactical gear?! You'd think he never got felt up at home. . . . AGENT WEISS! I swear to _God,_ if I find you near my desk again, getting stuck in your zipper will be a pleasant surprise! Did Barbie leave for Washington yet? Just lifted off? Good." Sensing her presence amidst the clutter, she wheeled around to face Sydney. "You're late!" She began powering down a hallway, apparently expecting the other agent to follow. "First of all, you missed the showing of Lauren's test in the break room, so now you're going to have to either buy a copy or borrow someone else's.

"Second, get your ass down to tact gear. Maybe _you_ can hurry Mr. Vain along." With that, she dropped off Sydney at tactical gear and continued on to op tech.

As the frosted glass doors' vacuum lock hissed in release, she saw Vaughn discard a bulletproof vest on a small mountain of its kindred. An older female with stringy white hair handed him another as he glanced up at Sydney. "Seems they lost my usual gear, and there's no time to make a new set. Did Shadow tell you that the CIA moved up its timetable? Well, actually, it was most likely just Shadow that moved everything up."

She darted an inquisitive glance at him on her way to her own locker of gear. "What? I didn't even get a call! Why did she do that?"

"My theory?" He raised his eyebrows as he strapped a layer of Kevlar around his torso and it fit. "She wanted to lose Weiss. But most likely—"

"She has something up her sleeve." Pausing in the excavation of her locker, she threw a glance over her shoulder. "How long has this place looked like a zoo?"

He shrugged. "Since I got here, at least."

"But not before? Like this morning?"

"No." Narrowed eyes. "You're thinking she changed the mission." Realization. "Because this is bigger than we all thought."

"Exactly." The white-haired woman floated ethereally back into her office, probably to allow them a more complete sense of secrecy. "If so many people are moving around like this... It kind of reminds me of when we—"

"—Took down SD-6?" They crossed the room towards one another, lowered their voices, and began talking in a torrent. "Why wouldn't she tell us if we were going to take down the Covenant?"

"And, more importantly, _how_ are we going to take down the Covenant by hijacking a boat with a bunch of guns?"

"Technically, we're supposed to be _commandeering_ a _ship_ and taking control of a _weapons cache._ But it still doesn't make sense—"

"Wait. Unless we're sailing the ship to the original port and following the land route to the stronghold of the North American cell. But then that would mean—"

"Simultaneous raids executed around the world in order to not tip off the other five cells. Since when did we get _that_ information?"

"Since when did we disband international terrorist organizations without knowing about it?"

"I don't know about you, but _I_ do it all the time." He grinned impishly as she ducked her head, leaning against the bank of lockers. Attaching a holster to his thigh with a Velcro strap, he commented, "We _are_ building up quite a track record."

Despite having no reason that she could think of, she blushed and continued to look anywhere but his face. "We don't even know if we're right."

"But we should probably expect the worst when it comes to Shadow." The serious tweak to his tone forced her to glance away from a curving crack in the painted concrete floor and up to the undulating skin on his forehead. She predicted the speech that was coming, but his words began pouring forth like heavy cream into a bowl. "Look, about this afternoon... I didn't mean to sound like such a jerk or be overbearing or—"

"—Jealous?"

He physically bit back his tongue, but Sydney could not tell whether he wanted to prevent assent or dissent from escaping. Her stomach heaved itself up next to her heart to take orders from the latter: what with the mission suddenly jumping out of control like a whirling dervish and the date being what it was and their multiple conversations and _'remember what happened the last time you disbanded a terrorist organization...?'_ Her stress level neared the explode-all-over-the-clean-walls plateau and she did not need a third "Let's Talk About Our Feelings for One Another But Then Ignore Everything We Just Said" conversation right before a mission with such high stakes.

So she let the subject of his illegal jealousy slide away as she laid a hand on her black fatigues. "I need to change and meet Shadow in op-tech. I'll see you on the plane."

The knot of frustrated disappointment between his eyebrows spoke volumes.

* * *

Weiss and Jack remained elusive through the ritual gathering of the guns and up until Shadow herded the agents onto the plane. Men and women were reduced to lumpy black protrusions from the vibrating shell of the cargo plane as it taxied on a hidden runway near LAX. The tension snapping through the air overpowered the roar of the engines firing up, and Shadow had to practically scream to be heard. "Alright, everybody, new plan. You all are going to Mexico for about thirty-six hours. Hope someone brought a deck of cards or a crossword puzzle." She punctuated her orders by hopping out of the cargo hold door onto the blurry pavement.

Stunned into silence by their abandonment, the agents began murmuring amongst themselves until the plane lurched, and everyone hurried to sit down. Sydney and Vaughn just locked eyes across the plane and exchanged knowing stares. The mumbling and muted conversations continued throughout the duration of the short flight, but the two of them remained silent, stewing in their own speculations. The plane landed and everyone exited without a hitch into the black vehicles lined up along the pier provided them by Mexican Intelligence, who had already made quick work of the Covenant members waiting for the shipment. Some people actually did pull out a pack of cards, but Vaughn snatched Sydney up from behind her book for a walk along the pier.

"What do you want, Vaughn?" she demanded, her tone unfortunately belying her exhaustion with this . . . this.

He sighed slowly, as if afraid that when it ended, he would need to form words and speak coherently. "You never let me finish what I was going to say back in L.A."

Waves lapped at the barnacle ridden support posts and nudged the fishing boats into one another like Weeble-Wobbles. The single, bare bulb at the end of the slimy wood gave off little light; the stars practically out-shown it even on this moonless night. Sydney sighed as well, reluctant to let go of her mission mode despite her heart's protestations. Folding her arms over her stomach, she murmured, "I'd rather not talk about this, Vaughn. All we ever do is talk, and nothing gets done, and then we just keep running around on the same track—"

"Sydney." His firm voice commanding her to stop babbling had no give to it, no loophole to scurry through to the safety on the other side. A fish broke the surface somewhere off to her left and caught a glimpse of the pair, attracting her gaze. The firmness of his voice gave away instead of in: gave away everything, in fact, everything that she feared and hoped for since the day she woke up and discovered the last seven hundred and thirty days were as much a mystery to her as the tax code. The firmness of his voice turned her stomach into Sydney Goo.

"Yes?"

The firmness of his voice apparently converted her own to the consistency of the water they strolled above. It reeked of weak hope.

"A few days ago, you said that I should stop talking and just do what I thought was right. This morning when I called, you said you thought one of us should transfer." With those two linked, this could not be a good conversation. "And I can't think of anything more wrong."

What?

She could tell he was fending off a grin of release. "Syd, I'm finally going to do what I _know_ to be right and true: when we get home, Lauren and I are going to separate."

Did that horrible hitching breath just come from her?

"I'm not happy anymore, and I know Lauren's clinging to the memories, but it won't be enough. She-she's just not you." His hand alighted upon her right cheek unbidden but not undesired, thumb caressing the arch of bone under her eye and collecting moisture. "It's always been you, Sydney. I love you so much."

The relieved and practically giddy sparkle in his green eyes would never leave her mind for as long as she lived. He only held her cheek, but she felt cradled in the sling of his heart, wrapped up and embalmed in the essence and utter love of Michael Vaughn. The small egg she had shoved her love into cracked open in her chest, its contents exploding all over her body in a shower of white sparks that melted into tiny fires. Only one word surfaced above the bonfire quickly enveloping her senses. "Seriously?"

His laugh escaped his lips before it fully matured, sounding more like a series of breaths passed through a gravel filter. "Yeah, I'm serious. I've never stopped loving you."

The cork that kept her words guarded shot out of the bottleneck and landed a million miles away. "So when you smuggled me to Rome and-and broke me out of NSC custody, you were—"

"Rectifying a previous indiscretion. Namely letting you get into those situations in the first place." The hand on her cheek dropped to cup her elbow. "I really wanted to go to Rome."

"I really wanted you to come with me." A brief cry of triumph sprung up from a van behind them and sailed out over the water, and the couple's light chuckle bubbled at the same time. Their foreheads gravitated towards one another as if forced by Natural Law, and Vaughn rubbed his nose alongside hers, re-memorizing the feel of his skin against her own. Her eyes, transfixed on the flushing flesh of his lips, excitedly noted the way his lower lip stretched and reached for hers, which she held coyly between her teeth. She felt her grip slip the longer she stared, and the magnetic force in their foreheads reconcentrated in their mouths: as soon as she released her lower lip, he captured it between his own lips, pulling and sucking it until the rest of her mouth entered range. Their first real kiss in years began slow and sweet, mouths slanting over moist skin until the surface was not enough and tongues snaked into the fray. They fumbled for a second, teeth clacking as they remembered how this worked, and then their tongues stroked together like an Olympic rowing team. Suddenly other body parts were thrown into the mix, hands wandering grabbing tweaking, thighs rubbing, hips grinding, and just as suddenly oxygen became sparse, forcing them back to their default positions.

Practically under her breath, she whispered, "I thought the earth-shattering kiss was supposed to come _after_ the takedown."

"It can happen then, too. I'm not picky," he suggested, and they laughed, sharing the same breath. He moved the hand that had been dangerously close to cupping her backside up to her face again, brushing his knuckles along the strong angle of her jaw. "God, it's so easy to be with you. I can't believe I denied myself — _us_ — this for so long."

"I'd almost forgotten how wonderful it is to be with you." Why couldn't her eyes budge from his? "A heartbeat is too long to spend not kissing you."

"I can take the hint." He continued to grin even as their mouths melded once more.

The kiss tasted of summer rain with the smoothness of rose petals and the heat of a lightning bolt. Again, the bothersome need for air wedged them apart, but when she licked her lips to rein in every last whisper of his taste, the back of her tongue scraped his mouth, and he gently captured her appendage between his teeth, smirking like in her memories. She tried to frown, but since he held her tongue captive, she ended up looking more like a sad clown with a lazy face, and he let her go in order to laugh again. "Hey, focus for a second, okay?" she demanded, grinning despite herself. He indulged her by wiping his façade clean, the smile transferring to his glittering eyes. "There are clearly issues we need to discuss. And I _am_ sorry for you and Lauren. Really, I am. But I'm also hopeful."

He truly sobered up. "With good reason. Syd, I've been thinking about this for a long time, so don't think I rushed into it for any particular reason. And I agree: we do have some issues. But we've got at least forty-eight hours to waste. Although, leave it to Shadow to bend the laws of space and time."

She draped her arms about his neck. "Forty-eight hours. Whatever shall we do?"

Picking up on the change in her tone, he suggested, "Talk?"

"Sounds perfect."

* * *

For the first time in about two and a half years, she woke up in the arms of Michael Vaughn. Tucked in the back corner of the 'sleeping van,' they had fallen asleep in the early morning hours while Vaughn sleepily regaled her of two seasons' worth of Kings and Dodgers lowlights; she actually fell asleep while he searched for a highlight other that Paul LoDuca and an _almost_ five-hundred season, and he followed after he stopped trying. As soon as they awoke to find no one else in the van, they knew rumours would fly, but for once, they really did not care. Much. With the sun came the realization that, yes, he was still married and, yes, they were still on one of Shadow's missions. Despite the best night's sleep that Sydney could recall in what seemed like forever, she conceded to the light performing acrobatics through the windshield in order to knock insistently on her eyelids: she extricated herself from Vaughn's embrace and headed off in search of food, feeling like she left a piece of her soul stuck to his body.

After another half day of mind-numbing boredom (Sydney caught a handful of agents making sand castles on a stretch of beach about a quarter of a mile away from the harbor), night fell again without even so much as a text message from Shadow. Sydney even tried calling her dad and Weiss but to no avail. Sighing in frustration, she stuffed her cell phone back into her pocket with more force than necessary.

Vaughn materialized over her shoulder. "No answer?"

"Nope. And knowing Shadow, we could be waiting here for a week while she gets her nails done or something."

"Shadow would _never_ get her nails done."

"You know what I mean." Even to her ears, her voice sounded snippy.

His brow rumpled, taken aback and hurt like he accidentally brushed up against a burning stove. "Syd, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she replied, too quickly to be truthful, tossing loose hair over her shoulder after she realized she was cornered. "It's just . . . Did you change your mind?" Those rumples on his forehead became peaks and valleys. "Decisions always seem better at night than they do when the sun rises, so I guess I'm wondering if you now think it'd be a — mistake — to separate from Lauren?"

Taking her firmly by the shoulders, Vaughn planted her in front of him and sought her gaze. "Sydney, I would never go back on my word; that's not me. I told you: I've been thinking about this for a while; _nothing_ can change my mind now, not light or dark, or hot or cold, or... I don't know, humidity." A reassuring grin toyed with the corner of his mouth. "I've made up my mind; weather conditions can't change that."

She did not have a chance to respond. Her pocket began vibrating as soon as she opened her mouth — finally a text message from Shadow. She read it aloud: "_'A pirate's life for me.'_ What the hell could that mean?" Before her verbal punctuation even ended, a previously undetected ship blasted its horn three times in what Sydney supposed was a greeting. Immediately the gambling agents scrambled to their vehicles and directed the headlights out over the harbor.

Illuminated at the bow of the rusty barge stood Shadow, hair whipping behind her in cords blacker than the sky above her. Just as quickly as they entered, the agents sprung from the vans and began helping the small barge dock. Shadow only disappeared from the bow when someone lowered the hatch to the cargo hold in the belly of the ship. She finally clunked down the gangplank to meet the still-transfixed Sydney and Vaughn as the lemming-like agents rushed the crates. "Drink up, me hearties, yo-ho!" she called, her regular combat boots finally matching her outfit.

Sydney did not bother to hide her astonishment. "You piloted that ship all the way from France alone in less than three days?"

Vaughn chimed in, "Isn't that slightly impossible?"

Shadow just stared at them for a moment, an eyebrow curving into an arch. "It's just a boat." Apparently, this argument held weight with her, so neither of them put up a fight. "And anyways, I had help: your father navigates an excellent strait of Gibraltar, and Weiss was good for knocking out a few bad guys."

"Where is he?" Vaughn asked, glancing past her at the wooden crates starting to come off the ship.

"Well, he got annoying, so . . . Hey! Leave that one out." She jogged over to a crate marked with a black 'X' on the top as both Sydney and Vaughn followed apprehensively. Slipping a crowbar from the tool belt of a passing mover, she tapped the box twice with the heel of her palm before prying off the top, releasing a sweaty and gasping Weiss.

He hauled himself to his feet with quaking joints and a bulging face, red shining out from every patch of exposed skin. Heaving in a fresh breath of salty air, he quipped, "Wow. I think that cured my seasickness."

Too many thoughts bobbed and wove through Sydney's head for her to capture a coherent one. Before a pieced-together semblance of a sentence could tumble out, Vaughn stole her victory. "Could he actually breathe in there?"

Shadow waved her hand carelessly. "Details. He's alive, ain't he? Your father approved of the idea."

"I don't think my father's has ever _not_ approved of someone being stuffed in a crate," Sydney muttered, more to herself than anything, but Vaughn followed her train of thought and allowed a small grin.

The second female picked up on this small moment and registered it with another intrigued arch of her eyebrow, but for once did not comment. Instead, she awkwardly helped Weiss out of his wooden prison and cleared her throat, effectively halting the work and garnering everyone's attention. "Plan: shit in the vans, ass in the vans, vans to the compound. Go for it."

An agent on the ramp tentatively raised his hand. "But we don't know where—"

"I downloaded the coordinates from the ship's computer, and I'll upload it to our units as soon as _we're ready to leave."_ Her pointed glare did not go unnoticed; the entire process sped up.

Soon enough, the convoy of about seven vans glided nearly noiselessly over the hard desert earth, bumping jovially over dips and rabbit holes. Shadow sat in the back of the lead vehicle with Sydney and Vaughn, who were careful not to reveal anything about the new, precarious status of their relationship. Still, she seemed to smell the change in the wind and situated herself to Sydney's left while she braided her hair again, allowing them full access to the corner — which they (unfortunately) did not exploit. Shay sighed at them in exasperation and addressed the rest of the troops.

"Listen up, or you just might wind up dead." Sydney internally grimaced at her premonition of where Shay's speech headed. "I'll let you in on a little secret: we're obviously not just intercepting a weapons shipment and transporting it to a drop point; we're actually on our way to the stronghold of the Covenant's North American cell." No one really looked surprised, so Shadow went for the whole hog, and Sydney's stomach crinkled in anticipation. "And we're working in coordination with German Intelligence, Chilean Intelligence, Algerian Intelligence, the Israeli Mossad, and . . . all of Australia, really. That means that with any luck, the Covenant will no long exist after tonight."

The van itself seemed to inhale sharply. Despite the cool night, air molecules vibrated and crackled with electricity at the mention of an all-consuming, final victory. One agent near the back swore then said, "Seriously?"

"And Barbie's not a natural blonde. Is there anything else you'd like spelled out for you?" Seeing as everyone valued his or her life, the vehicle remained relatively silent. "Right. Well, here's the plan. The Covenant knows something's up because of the raid on Polhov's port, but they'll be a bit crossed up—"

"Why?"

The glare Shay flung at Vaughn could have shattered diamond. "The mole told them that our massive force would be in France, and when only Agents Bristow and Weiss and I showed up and stole their boat out from under them, they were probably confused and more than a little angry. They'll expect us to grab the guns and run, not actually follow through on the shipment. However, they could suspect some sort of attack — at least one leader of the North American cell has a part of a brain left — so we need a plan.

"Therefore—" one last glare at Vaughn to make sure he remained silent "—we will indeed continue to the drop-off point and start the infiltration there. They may be more staffed than usual, but I'm not worried about that."

"Why?"

This time it was the agent in the back. She rolled her eyes but did not bother taking the time to injure him. "Look under your ass and then get back to me when you're not stupid."

The finality in Shadow's voice signaled the end to her instructions, but Sydney still refused to even glance her way. More sharp and sarcastic and hard than usual, Shay finally succeeded in intimidating Sydney. She was agitated, and nothing was supposed to do that, so when something crawled beneath her skin, the hairs stood up on the back of Sydney's neck. And in this hypersensitive state, Sydney could not predict how Shay would react to any change in the status quo — especially if the change involved a veiled insult of Lauren.

"So . . ." Shadow drawled, searching for the other female agent's eyes. "What's up?" Her tone spoke of a Saturday picnic in the park or a morning run on the beach or a coffee shop near midnight, not a van on a mission that could kill them all.

Sydney schooled her features with all the finesse she possessed. "Nothing much. Yourself?"

The woman to her left fixed her with a nearly patented x-ray stare, and the hairs already standing on Sydney's neck practically leapt out of their pores. Her frosty blue eyes glowed in the darkness like cats' eyes. Finally, she nodded once, apparently satisfied. "Communicating. Good. My little birdies may be ready to fly the nest before long."

Before Sydney could fully decipher Shadow's meaning, their vehicle began to slow, and the latter stood up, bracing herself against the wall over Sydney's and Vaughn's heads. "Remember," she said, "dead or alive. None of them are under the impression that they work for the good guys, so when you run out of tranq darts... switch." As the engine went dead, Sydney could hear voices approach the driver and boots head for the back. Shay nodded once, and the agents nearest the double doors kicked them open, allowing everyone else to issue out. People in black poured from the other vehicles and easily overwhelmed the men in the immediate vicinity, but then ran into a road block with those supervising from the loading dock. Everyone fired darts everywhere, indiscriminate of whether they actually hit their targets or not; Sydney, herself, tossed three extra darts at an enemy even though she brought him down with the first one.

'_Guess no one really cares if they run out,'_ she thought as she dodged a bullet by spinning behind a protrusion; she heard it bury into the plaster harmlessly. _'I know I don't. They took two years of my life, my best friends, and the man I love. "Say hello to my little friend" comes to mind.'_

Shadow caromed down the path cleared by the agents around them, beckoning Sydney and Vaughn to follow. She extracted the same diamond broach from the mission in France out of an inside pocket and again fixed it to the top of a steel door barring them from the inside. "Duck," she said, chipper, before crouching on the ground as the door imploded loudly but left the broach untouched. She gathered it again as she led the way through the dust and debris. "Recycling props is a good thing. You should really talk to Marshall about that."

And then the bad guys came. Shadow sprung into action faster than an iguana's tongue catching its prey: fluid and graceful, the bullets and blows seemed to wend around the bending woman, reluctant to stop the music and her dance. Her long, black braid trailed behind her, gleaming like the icy remnants of a comet as she spun through the air, lashing out with those signature boots. The gun in her hand quickly became irrelevant; she only needed her hands. And legs. And maybe a wall or two. In turn, Sydney was inspired to mirror her colleague: she turned kicks and ran up walls like she had not done in years. Weiss joined the fray and took care of the remnants of the first course as reinforcements for both sides appeared on the scene.

He caught up to the three originals as they charged on deeper into the complex. "Dude, that was _hot._ Since when did you guys move like that?"

"It's called working out," Shay breathed, glancing quickly around a corner before springing off in the opposite direction. "You should try it some time."

Once the four of them separated themselves from the major bulk of the disturbance, they encountered minimal resistance and found themselves rapidly approaching the heart of the building's operations, but Shadow suddenly directed them on a hard left turn, heading towards the perimeter of the building again. Sydney and Vaughn exchanged an anxious glance, and she spoke up, "Where are we going? Shouldn't we be—"

"Are you kidding me?" Shay spat, exasperation braided into both her body language and tone. "I'd expect something that stupid from Weiss, not from you. But since y'all—" She cut herself off like a self-censor and tossed a pointedly raised eyebrow over her shoulder at her fellow female agent "—I'll forgive you. Because of our not-so-graceful entrance, the leaders will know we're here. So we're going to try to head them off. Let's just hope the rest of the boys can handle themselves while the adults are out."

The decor became more Mexican and native as they approached the front of the compound: stucco ceiling and dusty, red sandstone walls and floor with the occasional braided carpet or woven tapestry infusing a flash of colour as they bowled by. Lights grew brighter and their hallway became less pueblo-like as they entered the foyer of the building, finally pausing on the threshold to the outside. Several trucks idled just outside the range of the flood lights, and small specs of illumination bobbed and wove around them, shuttling fuel and other supplies. A streak of blonde flashed in the darkness, and both female agents raised their guns at the same time, but only one of them fired.

Shadow recoiled again as she felled a second tango previously tucked into the folds of night. The blonde retraced its steps and peered up at them. "Shadow. It's been far too long, love."

"Yes, sweet, far too long." Shay lowered her weapon to her side but did not slacken her grip. An obviously fake grin spread her lips. "Well, that's one theory proved right. I knew you were involved, but _management,_ Jules? I didn't think that was quite your style."

"Like I said, love, it's been a long time."

Guns cocked beside Sydney as well as out by the vehicles as Sark stepped fully into the halo of light on the ground. Sydney's lip curled in a silent snarl, and Shay glanced at her out the corner of her eye. "I see by that sneer there's no need to make formal introductions, but let's recap anyway. Sydney, Vaughn, Weiss, this is Julian Sark. Now let's see the proof of my other theory."

Sark tossed his head and scoffed, and Sydney tightened her grip on the gun. "And what might that be, Finch?"

Sydney felt the rage explode from Shadow's body, but the latter's expression did not change. "The mysterious identity of your co-chair. You might know 'er: blonde with nasty brown roots, slight, kinda bony, lots of black eyeliner, I guess you can call it a British accent—"

As Sydney, Vaughn, and Weiss all steeped in confusion, a seething cry of anger rose up from the inside of the closest armored vehicle, jolting Shadow back into action. Testing the weight of her gun in her palm as her gaze remained fixed on Sark's cocky grin, she murmured, "Take care of the extras; there aren't many, so this shouldn't be too tough for you. Do whatever you want to the partner — and I assume you'll want to do a lot — but Sark's mine."

"What's the official stance on bringing them in?" Vaughn asked, barely moving his lips for fear of Shadow striking him and not Sark.

She glared so intently at their blonde enemy that the other three agents recoiled themselves. "Officially? Somewhat alive. But guns go off on their own occasionally. It happens." Finally swiveling her head toward Sydney, she smiled savagely. "And don't forget to have fun." She ran at Sark, and in the chaos that followed, Sydney lost track of her fellow agent. People in black swarmed up the front steps of the compound, and the three agents had no choice but to dive in headfirst. Literally.

Sydney immediately struck with her gun, figuring to mow down as many mercs with bullets as she could before the crowed thinned and she would have to get her hands dirty. But her bullets disappeared before she would have hoped, and she compensated by striking out with the weapon itself, bashing it into skulls and arms and necks. (One burly man was particularly difficult: he required all three.) The charging shadows dwindled until only a handful remained, revealing the back of a rapidly retreating vehicle.

Sprinting automatically towards one of the idling vehicles, she called out to Vaughn, wincing as his opponent clocked him in the head. Shaking off the blow, he retaliated with an elbow to the temple and followed Sydney's lead, climbing into another truck to help in the pursuit. Sydney practically levitated over the packed desert ground, wheels barely touching the sand as she floored the gas pedal, attempting to gain ground. She assumed the co-chair was the person erratically swerving the vehicle in a poor imitation of a fly pattern, kicking up clouds of silt that broke against her windshield. During a brief respite, she peered to her left to see Vaughn neck and neck with her, hunched over the wheel in concentration. He happened to glance through his passenger window at the same time, locking eyes with her as he grinned briefly and circled his finger in the air. Nodding once, she swung into action.

Verbally urging her truck to speed faster, she drifted farther to the right and made to overtake the enemy by cutting in front. As predicted, the brakes squealed as the vehicle stopped just short of plowing through Sydney's rear axle, and Vaughn followed in her wake, circling and kicking up dust until a perpetual sandstorm surrounded them so that no one could see. But Sydney and Vaughn, having counted the seconds spent during one rotation, stopped facing their target and pushed simultaneously against its grill, forcing it back towards the compound — and the light. The vibrations from the other vehicle's resistance made her hands tightly gripping the wheel go numb, but with the two trucks working together, they managed to drag the third to the compound. It skidded and slipped as the still-spinning wheels flailed for purchase, slamming into the other abandoned trucks before finally vaulting up onto the front steps and lodging against the doors to the building, a resounding crash echoing out over the flatlands.

Before their engines even stopped grinding, the two agents bolted out the doors and towards the driver's side. Raising his gun, Vaughn called for a surrender but received no response. Sydney reached for the handle but never locked on: two bodies crashed through the large, mullioned window next to the staircase, sending shards of tinkling glass raining down on the still wrestling bodies. Immediately, they both recognized the long, black braid of Shadow and Sark's cocky blue eyes doing battle even though crags of glass protruded from clothing and skin.

Momentarily occupied, Sydney did not notice as the unidentified driver peeked through the window and unlatched the door. Suddenly, the steel-reinforced metal slammed into the side of her head and literally knocked her off her feet. Vaughn spun around, and his fist automatically shot out and rammed the enemy's jaw, the meaty impact giving him a moment to tend to Sydney, who shook off his help and rose to her feet alone. They peered up to get their first look at the co-chair of the North American cell.

Brown eyes, round and glassy with a mixture of fear and loathing, glared at them through a thicket of black eyeliner, down a crinkled nose, and over leering lips that stretched over a mouth crowded with teeth. Blonde hair swooped up into a severe bun, but after the chase and Vaughn's punch, rebel strays waved in the breeze. A streak of crimson slanted across a right cheek — a remnant from Vaughn's fist. She spit at the couple's feet. "Never thought you'd turn out to be a wife beater, Michael."

Lauren Reed.

One of the leaders of the Covenant's North American cell.

And, by proxy, their mole.

Sydney could feel her jaw hanging slack, mirroring Vaughn's agape gaze. For a moment, they all just seemed to stand there staring at one another, letting the anger and hate and betrayal and hate and confusion and hate and realization course through their neural pathways. Questions — most of which were admittedly accusatory but rhetorical in nature — fought with her blind rage, kept tempered and diluted in its own sealed bottle until now. The questions, inextricably linked with that red cloud of rage, quickly receded and allowed the red to rule. Sydney opened her mouth to release something scathing, but Shadow chose that moment to fly at them, landing with her back flat against the armored vehicle.

"Theory two: check." Her eyes sparkled with sadistic glee even though a long gash along her hairline leaked blood rivulets down the side of her face. "Guess you missed a little something in the briefings; otherwise you would have gotten your anorexic little ass out of here even quicker than Jules. Your boss isn't gonna be too happy about this. Y' know, if he exists after tonight." Sydney caught the brief note of panic that darted across Lauren's face before she could tuck it away. Shadow noticed too, and her breathless tone turned triumphant. "Well, I really must finish kicking the ass I started on before I get to you. But I suspect you won't be disappointed in these two. Continue on." She launched herself forward again, presumably to recommence her battle with Sark.

The idea to turn around had barely crossed Sydney's mind before she heard another body slam up against the truck followed by a slur of low curses and names. Vaughn had Lauren pinned to the side of the vehicle by her neck, his fist clenching tighter as his volume lowered. Lauren's hands clutched at his much bigger one, crocodile tears mixing with the blood on her cheek as her shoes tried to gain purchase on the elusive sand.

"Michael, darling, I-I can explain everything!" She rasped, and half of Sydney wanted to stay the execution by suffocation and listen for amusement. "My mother . . . when I was young . . . _please_ Michael . . . !"

"Vaughn!" Sydney's compassion won, and she reached out to touch his unoccupied arm. "Look at me." What she saw when she garnered his attention scared her more than anything she had ever seen before. With his lip snarled and a muscle twitching near his nose, his features morphed into that of a crazy person — something she had seen on the faces of countless bad guys, but never on _him._

And she never wanted to see that look on him again.

Now gripping his arm, she appealed to him, part of her still slightly disbelieving. "Our orders are dead _or alive._ You don't have to do this. _Don't_ do this. Because you'll never forgive yourself if you do."

In his moment of hesitation, Lauren sprung. Using his momentum against him, she dodged his grip and smashed his face into the side of the truck, giving him a taste of his own medicine and bashing his nose. Lauren's sadistic grin as she let gravity suck him to the ground broke something within Sydney — the barrier that separated all her personal animosity for Lauren and patriotic zeal to bring the mole to justice. Sydney lunged with her fist first, solidly connecting with the same side of her nose as had Vaughn, catching her off-guard.

The latter staggered for a moment as she held a hand to her newly split lip. "Just how long have you been waiting to do that, Agent Bristow?"

"Longer than I should have been." Sydney had to maneuver the fight over and around Lauren's fallen comrades, feet dancing in drifts of blood-saturated sand. Lauren stooped to quickly nab a stray firearm, but Sydney stepped on her hand and then kicked her stomach, sending the mole spinning. Toeing the weapon away and out of reach, Sydney pursued.

Lauren backsprung to her feet in time to receive an uppercut to the jaw, this time the relatively unsullied part of her face, but parried with a right cross of her own, connecting solidly with Sydney's cheekbone. Shaking off the spike of pain, Sydney struck with a punch to the gut — blocked — a left cross — blocked — and an elbow — blocked and twisted. Lauren allowed herself a brief grin. "Not as easy as I look, huh? By the way, how is your ankle doing?"

Sydney tried a left crescent kick while standing on her right to prove her ankle's stability, but Lauren dropped into a crouch and swept out with her leg, hooking Sydney's injured joint and reeling her to the ground. A sharp, stabbing pain — not unfamiliar to Sydney — burned up her nerves and nearly glued her to the sand. Taking the opportunity laid before her, Lauren pounced on the CIA agent, pinning her to the ground with a hand around her throat and attacking her face with a cat-like ferocity. She tore at her hair and scratched at her eyes. Sydney writhed beneath her, trying to overpower her with upper-body strength, but only succeeded in tossing sand into a wound on her arm. Maneuvering her legs between them, Sydney kicked off Lauren's stomach as if it were a trampoline, sending her soaring through the air and into the broken glass pit earlier created by Shadow and Sark.

Moaning as she twitched on the sparkling shards, Lauren peered up at Sydney as she calmly stalked the fallen enemy, barely hiding her limp. The CIA agent reached down to grab a particularly large chunk and do a little disfiguring before the final arrest, but Lauren wrapped her fist around a lock of her hair and tugged her to the earth, face down in the hostile sea of reflecting light. Sydney cried out as splinters dug into her skin, burrowed into her gear and then into the supposedly protected areas underneath. Resuming her position above the agent — this time hovering over her back without worry of bucking — Lauren gripped the shard Sydney had sought and brandished it against the latter's neck. "Some things weren't a lie: I always abhorred your presence." Sydney felt the tip pierce her skin, but then the pressure stopped.

"The feeling's mutual."

She dared a glance skyward as the body fell to the ground beside her, revealing Vaughn with a crowbar. _"God,_ that felt good," he confessed, offering Sydney a hand.

This time, she took it, babying her ankle for only a moment as she peered around them, the absence of someone finally striking her. "Oh, my God. Where's Weiss?"

Vaughn's eyes darted about as well, but before he could even open his mouth, Sark and Shadow banged out of the back of one of the still idling vehicles, rolling in a flurry of black and blonde and arms and legs. She finally shoved him off in a move similar to Sydney's earlier, rose, and somewhat dusted herself off. "Weiss went to rally the rest of the troops and 'secure the compound.' Now, I could really use your help with Sark, because he just won't die, no matter how hard I try." She began trotting off towards Sark's jerking body. "Oh," she threw over her shoulder, "she seems to still be alive. Do something about that, won't you?"

Lauren was, in fact, stirring on the ground, and Vaughn choked up on the crowbar as Sydney stepped between the husband and wife. Placing her hands on his chest in an attempt to ground him, she locked onto his gaze and murmured, _"Dead or alive."_

"That doesn't mean you can't have fun!" Shadow called back just before Sark kicked her square in the back.

Vaughn and Sydney glanced at each other. "Three on two: sounds like good odds," she shrugged indifferently.

"Especially with _that_ on our side." He nodded towards Shadow, who had just broken off a side mirror from Lauren's truck and golf-swung it into Sark's jaw. Matching her shrug, he added, "We have a long way to go to catch up to Shay."

Becoming serious again, she warned, "If you get crazy-scary again, I won't hesitate to punch you in the face."

"Wouldn't expect anything less."

Lauren had raised herself up onto her hands and knees, coughing blood onto the sand. Like a soccer player, Sydney kicked with the top of her foot and sent their enemy spinning through the air towards Shadow and Sark with the other two CIA agents pursuing.

Then the real fight started. The three of them swapped combatants every few blows, tossing the crowbar about whenever someone called for it. Shadow and Sydney took particular pleasure in beating up on Lauren, but she was just as resilient as her partner. Shadow's fists moved so fast that they blurred, but Lauren blocked a good number of them, and when one struck her injured jaw, she cried out in pain and anger, simultaneously side-kicking Shay in the ribs. The latter executed a backflip over to where Sydney and Sark were fighting and jumped directly into the fray without missing a beat.

Sydney mentally noted her companion's increased ferocity when she combated the young Brit. As this was the first time that she had ever extensively witnessed the woman's fighting style, she really had nothing to compare it to, but Shay emitted a seriousness and raw energy that Sydney never felt from anyone before. If she did not know Shadow better, she would call it desperation, but it was not vengeance either; a need, a hunger maybe. For what, though . . . ?

"Crowbar!" Shadow called suddenly, dodging a punch as Vaughn reluctantly airmailed the metal bar over Lauren's head. Shay caught it low to the ground and kept its momentum going, taking Sark out by the ankles. Straightening up to stand next to Sydney, she remarked, "I would say something witty here, but you're not worth the brain cells."

Sark's smirk looked more like a snarl. "Funny: I heard one-liners used to be your forte."

"Rey really did tell you everything, didn't he?" Shadow, crowbar still in hand, lashed out at him again with her boot, but he rolled away and leapt to his feet, grabbing her left wrist and twisting it behind her back as she reared back with her right for another blow.

"He didn't just tell me about your fighting style." His voice a viper posing as a silk cravat. "What did you used to say? 'Up for and up against anything'?"

With a guttural burst of rage, Shay ducked out of his hold and swung the bar like a bat, connecting with the small of his back and sending him hurtling into a truck. _"You killed Riley Blankenship!"_

Sydney — who had been too interested in the confrontation playing out before her to do much more than dodge Lauren's lame attacks while her back was turned — was surprised by the rawness of Shadow's tone. It was real: emotions never surfaced through her carefully calculated mask, but these words reeked of emotion. It was hard and bitter and broken, like someone was amputating part of her soul and funneling the feeling into different words besides 'ow.' Her face contorted cruelly, the blood from her knuckles gripping the metal rod rushing up into her cheeks.

Suddenly the crowbar ended up in Sydney's arms as Shadow stalked Sark with her ice-blue eyes. "Take this. I want to kill him with my bare hands. I'll only be a few minutes."

"Your dead boyfriend took that long to break, too."

Shay flew at him so ravenously that Sydney lost hope of ever seeing him alive again so that she could torture him herself. She refocused her attention on Lauren and Vaughn who grappled like spitting cats. Vaughn's true emotions and physicality no longer matched: while Sydney was sure his heart boiled with the desire to maim every inch of Lauren he could lay his hands on, his body was tired, lagging behind enough that his wife landed a sidekick on his ribs.

As Vaughn gripped his chest, Sydney stepped in and brought the crowbar down on Lauren's shoulder with the hope of dislocating it. Didn't happen, but she cried out in mingled agony and fury, cradling her shoulder like a child, and instead of maintaining her focus on Vaughn, she turned on Sydney, an animal cornered. They flew at each other, tearing at hair and skin and drawing blood and angry lines. A plan began to form in Sydney's head. If she could get Lauren near the back doors of one of the trucks and push her inside, they could seal her inside with a little help from Shay. If they could tear her away from Sark. Snatching the hair at the nape of Sydney's neck, Lauren drawled in her ear, "Why do you fight so? If you knew the truth, your alliances would most definitely realign."

"Truth? What could you possibly know about truth?" Before Sydney could break their deadlock with a frustrated kick to the stomach, Lauren wrestled the crowbar from her grasp and swung, connecting with Sydney's temple, sending her spinning to the ground in a spiral of black and reality.

When the throbbing in her head abated long enough for her to open her eyes, Vaughn cradled her in his lap, smoothing hair away from her face in order to get a better look at the damage. "Sydney?" he whispered, voice ragged with terror and barely suppressed hope. "Are you okay?"

"Better: there's two of you." She smiled as he brushed a thumb across her temple, instantly healing the pain.

This small, love-filled gesture angered Lauren more than the taunts and blows combined. She charged them as Vaughn helped Sydney to her feet. "The truck," she called to him, sidestepping Lauren's fist to snatch it from midair and twist her to the ground. Vaughn understood, launching Lauren toward the vehicle with a kick to the stomach. When she finally rose from the ground, Sydney crouched to deliver a sweep kick, and when Lauren jumped to avoid it, Vaughn pushed her into the open rear doors and banged them shut behind her.

"SHADOW!"

She appeared beside them wielding a black eye and a pen-like object. Pressing a small button, a concentrated red beam of light pin-pointed the handle and lock, melting the metal into one coherent blob. "Laser pen," she breathed, echoing her words from mere days before. "Never leave home without one."

Sark then rounded the corner of the truck, but before he could even lunge at any of them, a gunshot reverberated across the flat desert lands. Their last remaining enemy clutched his leg, which now sported a gaping and bleeding hole. "You shot me!"

Shadow peered at the gun in her hand with bewilderment. "Forgot I had this one." Replacing it in its secret spot inside her vest, she said, "Guess that's everyone, then. Time to head back north of the border — unless you two lovebirds want to spend a few weeks in Cancun or something."

Both opened their mouths to begin grilling their companion when the calvary arrived — albeit a bit late — in their transport vans from the back of the building. Calmly walking around the confused couple and Sark bleeding out on the ground, she yelled, "About time! Barbie's in her Dream Truck and _he's_ down there. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to go home. By plane."

They did not kiss over the physical remnants of a terrorist organization, or leap over desks and sparks to reach one another; they kissed over bloodied sand and the terrorists themselves, reaching across inchmiles of air to find the other's warm and waiting lips.

And this time, no Weiss telling them the obvious. This time, he knew how much this moment meant to them.

_**TBC . . . **_

Just one more to go! Reviews tell me what you like!

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


	7. Chapter 7: Sunrise

**This Chapter: **See alternate chapter titles: Recovery, Aftermath, Wrap-Up…. We're wrapping it up.

**Suggested Soundtrack: **"Mr. Curiosity" by Jason Mraz, "The Little Things Give You Away" by Linkin Park, "Good Enough" by Evanescence, "Love is a Marathon" by Teddy Geiger

**Author's Note: **This is it, guys! This story was meant to fit right in between "Full Disclosure" and the fourth season (even the number of "episodes" almost matches up), but this story did not deal with Nadia, Sloane, Rambaldi, or what happened in Wittenburg, so it doesn't match up _exactly_. But we more fully explored the mole issue as well as got to see a prolonged resurrection of the S/V ship: something the show just never did. Hope you enjoy the last chapter!

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Sunrise**

Even the fallout from the Covenant's downfall seemed ill coordinated to Sydney. When the team returned to Los Angeles (a little bruised but in one piece), Dixon informed them that most takedown procedures played through without a hitch except for one. The Asian cell in Siberia ran into a small problem: Irina Derevko and her former lapdog McKennas Cole. While the cell still ceded authority to the Russian government, more than half the team returned in body bags — some did not return at all — and the leaders managed to escape.

And because Sydney Bristow happened to be the daughter of Irina Derevko, the CIA thought it prudent to tack on a couple hours' worth of questioning about any information she might have gleaned during her two years' absence pertaining to her estranged 'mother.' Seeing as she repeatedly reminded her interrogators that she remembered more of her own birth than those two years, those hours were spent mostly in bored, defiant silence.

From there the briefings, debriefings, and questioning did not stop; they ran back-to-back-to-back, and it was not uncommon for her to go from being the person demanding answers of a mercenary to the person under the spotlight. Just when she thought her human rights were being violated, they allowed her a fifteen-minute break to shove food in her mouth and stretch her legs. Excited at the prospect that maybe, just maybe she could see Vaughn for a few seconds, she practically ran into the bullpen and searched it from top to bottom for even a sign of him. Coming up with literally nothing — everything must have been confiscated for a thorough search — she returned to her captors a bit early, finding no reason to hang around without entertainment.

But the next round of debriefs provided more than enough of that. She started off in a closet that should have contained mops and a bucket instead of her answering questions about Lauren Reed, the mole status, and her relationship to Michael Vaughn. When she became indignant and refused to confirm or deny an extra-marital affair with Vaughn, they actually upgraded her to a real room, but one that still had people in it. They decided to merge her Lauren-related debrief with Vaughn's obviously more extensive one.

Somewhere, Sydney knew Kendall was probably giggling with glee.

She planned castration for the next time she saw him.

She could think of less painful ways to pass the time: a root canal, scalping, prying her fingernails out one by one. They asked him to analyze every single minute of his marriage to Lauren for any indication of how long she was duplicitous and what information she pried out of him. As soon as they mentioned pillow talk, she took that as her cue to excuse herself.

She sat at her desk, quietly, peacefully, staring off into the space between atoms like she could find answers and pluck them from the air. Despite both asking and answering questions for the better part of a day, she was no closer to understanding this debacle than the CIA probably was. How long had Lauren been a mole for the Covenant? How many of Sydney's operations had she comprised? How many times had Sydney almost been _killed_ because of her? What was her endgame? Her motivation? Could she bear part of the blame for Sydney's missing two years? Had her marriage to Vaughn been orchestrated by the Covenant, like Irina Derevko and her father? Had Vaughn been staying true to a marriage that was not based on truth to begin with?

Did the answers really matter in the first place?

She sat at her desk and stared between atoms, feeling like she was two steps behind, like she treaded water in slow motion while the rest of the world fast-forwarded through life in a speedboat. She felt solitary, alone. Suffocating in a vacuum when she knew there was air all around her, she was staring at _the space between atoms. . . ._

The same thing happened after the takedown of SD-6; these feelings were little more than muscle memory now. But unfamiliar to her was the absence of a rock to ground her, something to keep her from floating into the space between atoms and from thinking these insane thoughts. Unfamiliar to her was the absence of Vaughn. This was his turn to fall apart, and she had to be strong, resilient enough to be able to pick up _both _of their pieces and keep the presence of mind to crazy glue them back together in the right order. She must claw her way back down to Earth and turn herself from air into something resembling a rock — maybe a paperweight — in order to spare him from feeling these all-too-familiar sensations. If she loved him she could do it, never mind that Bristownium appeared nowhere on the Periodic Table of Elements, and it was nearly impossible to instantaneously convert a gas into a solid. (But since when did the notion of impossibility appear in her vocabulary?) She loved him enough. She could do it.

But she had to be careful: his muscle memory involved arms and hugging and stroking hair and bubble baths with candles and wine and soothing words spoken into trembling necks and lots of listening on his part. But if he listened this time — if he played the rock and not the space between the atoms — he would not get the chance to feel the emotions most definitely welling in his system. If he listened this time, he would keep those emotions bottled up inside without release. If he listened this time, he would end up Crazy-Scary Vaughn again. If he listened this time, Lauren would have stolen the Michael Vaughn she fell in love with.

She loved him enough. She could do it.

So rock it was.

In preparing for her new role, she felt rather than saw his entrance into the bullpen. The room rippled with a new dynamic: discomfort. In a wave that fanned out from him, agents cringed away from him guiltily whether they had truly been talking about him or not. But she let the wave break around her as she stood and locked eyes with him. At that moment, she realized just how tired and worn he looked; only she probably recognized the signs, but they were there nonetheless: his weight rested equally distributed on both legs instead of slouching on mostly one. The cowlick near his right temple was, well, _there_ instead of consciously beaten into submission. His shirt cuffs hung open inside the sleeves of his blazer — he tended to pick at them during exceptionally long briefings, and he had been known to pop a button and have to run to the nearest Joanne Fabrics for a needle and thread.

Their held gaze touched off a new bout of murmured rumors, but she ignored them as she flicked her eyes roofward and headed down the hallway toward the stairs, hoping the copious amount of flights might buy her some thinking time.

Ten stories and zero results later, she banged open the door to the roof and found him half-sitting, half-leaning against the edge of the building. Without a word, she took up the same position to his right, staring out at a city that had no idea that its existence had been threatened let alone saved. The cool breeze rubbing her nose raw made her wish she stopped for a coat, but then Vaughn extracted his left hand from his pocket, fingers pinching something.

"When I first thought of putting this on," he explained, his wedding ring catching the light, "I promised myself it would be forever. I stuck to that ideal even though everything else screamed for me not to. I also promised it would be your ring." She glanced at him sharply out the corner of her eye. "I let her break both promises."

"Vaughn, don't do this." His gaze remained on the ring even though she knew he felt her seeking it out. "Don't blame yourself for any of this. I understand anger; I understand hate; I even understand regret. Guilt and blame, however, will not be tolerated."

"But _I_ married her! _I_ missed all the signs! _I_ could have prevented all of this by saying 'no' to a date a year and a half ago—"

"Well, I'm saying 'no' now." Inside, she panicked: he was much smoother at this comforting role, and his stubbornness quickly frustrated her, leaving her brisk and blunt and not saying _any_ of the right words. "You can't blame yourself because she did her job well. Surprising as that may seem," she added under her breath. "You can't blame yourself for what _she_ did. _She_ did it, Vaughn; not you.

"And I know you probably want to put a bullet between her eyes. Hell, _I_ want to torture her a bit to find out if she knew anything about why the Covenant took two years of my life. . . !" She sensed herself reverting back to floating between the atoms, so she cut herself off awkwardly to rethink her strategy. Her breath echoed between them.

He grinned ruefully. "Not as easy as you thought, huh?"

"What? Oh." She offered a half-grin and fluster-filled cheeks. "No, not exactly." Allowing her eyes to catch on the clouds of smog causing the surrounding buildings to wiggle, she marinated in her thoughts again as she grappled for the words to explain her desperate need for him to skip the obsessive roller coaster and head straight for the lazy river of the rest of his life.

She loved him. She could do it.

And the words came.

"This is what she wanted, Vaughn. She wanted to throw your life so off kilter that you wouldn't notice or care about anyone else but her. When you tried to strangle her . . . I thought I'd lost you."

"You'll _never_ lose me again," he broke in, and her sigh/eye roll combination exuded exasperation.

"This isn't about me! Don't you _dare_ make any of this about me, 'cause then you won't get to feel and you'll bottle everything up inside and you'll end up like my father and I'll lose you, I know it! Stop being the silent sufferer and tell me what you're thinking.

"That's why comforting you right now is so damn hard: what you need is the cold, hard truth. And the truth is that this _sucks._ Like hardcore suckiness." They shared a rueful grin, and she took the opportunity to snatch his right hand, and she gripped it with all the ferocity she possessed. "And suckiness is okay, because we're together. I believe in you." She finally garnered his gaze. "Let me be your rock this time. Please. I want to."

He visibly hovered on the borderline of divulging or ducking behind his guard, and she was out of practice at pulling him from within himself. She could only love him and have faith that he would make the right decision for them. Suddenly he launched himself from the ledge and began pacing in front of her, his shoes clapping the ground at such a rapid pace that she knew his body was trying to keep up with the myriad thoughts pulsing through his brain. He mumbled to himself under his breath, gripping and releasing the fist harnessing the plague-ridden ring, and she let his impulsiveness run its course, watching him with outward calm and inward anxiety. Her main question?

After all they had been through, all that had been denied them, would he let the hatred go for her love?

Just as abruptly as he started he stopped in front of her, shoulders rounded and arms hanging loose. "Syd . . ." His voice cracked, and he did not try it again, but she understood. She rose, seeking to absorb every last drop of pain leaking from his eyes, but he closed them, opting instead to seek a kiss. Different from their last two, this one bruised and bit and tasted and suckled and clacked, speaking of memories — opportunities for _this_ — lost and more memories that could (possibly . . . wait, most _definitely) _come after.

Her face ended up sandwiched between his desperate hands, and her own fingers anchored his lapels. Resting their foreheads in a familiar embrace of their own, his lips sought hers once more before curving slightly. "You wouldn't happen to know any jokes, would you?"

She laughed breathily, giddy with release and relief, and she let her hands linger on his chest, straightening his jacket. "Well, I know one about a grasshopper, but as I remember, there is a minor discrepancy over the name of said insect."

"I still say Phil is funnier than Doug."

"Vaughn, it was totally the other way around."

"Nuh-uh, and I'm the one with the elephant memory, so my word's the one we'll be trusting."

"What does it matter? You're laughing." Her grin softened as he nuzzled her nose. "All of this happened so quickly; I know I'm confused about everything. All my thoughts are kind of jumbled up in my head, and I just want to—" She cut herself off, remembering the last time she stood on a roof so confused. Peering about, she finally settled on the glimmering hunk of metal the CIA passed off as an air conditioning system. Tugging lightly on his tie, she led him to the unit and clambered up, gesturing for him to follow. She was sure this whole thing looked slightly less crazy at night and in other clothing, but she improvised and bet that both of them would receive the same benefits regardless, and she wantedneeded to push Vaughn that extra inch down the road to dealing with what had happened.

"Have you ever been so angry, you just want to scream?"

Without waiting for an answer, she strangled his hand, screwed up her face, breathed deep, and yelled out all her anxiety and nerves and hope and despair and frustration and love and happiness and loathing and—

—And sans any instruction or explanation from her, he strangled back, answering with his own deep Bellow of Many Facets, and soon their unified cries of fear and hope were cancelled out in the hectic hubbub of downtown Los Angeles. When they finally petered out into heaving chests, her knuckles ached pleasantly, still contorted in the shape of his grip as they both tried to catch their breaths.

Vaughn lifted an eyebrow, pink dancing across his face from exertion. "Shadow?"

"How'd you know?" They saw rather than heard the other laugh. "Clearly, there are still issues we have to work through. Two and a half years is a long time; we've both changed." She spoke slowly, unwilling to break the amicable truce resting between them. "Which is why I think we should take things slowly. At least, at first."

"Good. I think that's an honorable choice." She recognized that grin. He wore that grin whenever he wanted to— "But I'm making no promises."

"Vaughn!" she warned, tone trying to decide whether it was serious or playful.

He conceded with a self-deprecating eye roll. "Okay. How about coffee after work? We can talk. And I'll sign a couple of divorce papers."

Laughing despite herself, she nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

They maintained bodily contact all the way down the stairs and back into the bullpen, physically reminding the other of their mental support. They tried to revert back to a professional distance, but only got so far as their arms brushing against one another before the Debrief Devils reclaimed him for yet one more round of fun and games. As he exited the bullpen, flanked on all sides by guards at least twice his size, she locked onto his gaze and nodded once, silently telling him that she would wait for him as long as it took. Then she hunkered down at her desk, ready to spend at least twenty-four more hours in her work clothes.

"Ten hours of debrief? That's it?! Man, you guys aren't even trying; I can go _so_ much longer." The agents backed away from Shadow as if they were glad to be rid of her but did not want to turn their backs to her. She spotted Sydney and shuffled over to perch on a corner of the desk. "I hope for your sake that not all CIA boys have such lame endurance."

Sydney would have smiled if Shay's clothing did not distract her. Dressed in a solid green t-shirt, jeans, and black flip-flops with a red ribbon around her wrist, her black hair fell loosely about her shoulders and down her back. Her face seemed clean and fresh as if it had been recently scrubbed of two years' worth of heartache and seriousness. Striking angles mellowed somewhat, less severe, less focused but just as determined. The ice melted off her blue eyes, leaving them the color of the Caribbean Sea at midday. But black nail polish still fell away from her nails in flecks, the only remnants of the old Shadow.

Sydney's jaw must have been hanging open, because Shadow laughed shortly with just a speck of humour lilting the end. "Can I help you?"

Words — "alias," "jeans," "boots," "seriously" — raced over Sydney's tongue but could not be voiced, so she went the simple, unequivocal route. "Huh?"

Another slightly mirthy laugh. "Go ahead. You can ask."

"Were you playing us? Is Shadow an alias?"

"Not on your life," she chuckled, tone sliding down into mocking and even almost condescending. "That's what Barbie thought when I helped in her interrogation, but she's wrong per usual. I just like to switch it up every once in a while, and I knew I'd be here for, like, three days straight, and those boots start being excessive after seventeen hours. Flip-flops are fun, too: I get to see my toes." To punctuate her point, she wiggled her digits — also painted black — with an amused expression.

A handful of days ago, Sydney would have found this admission strange beyond words, but now she merely glossed over it and honed in on the only phrase that caught her attention. _"You_ helped question Lauren?"

"Uh, excuse me if I sound early nineties, but duh! Do you really think I'd miss an opportunity like that? Not likely. It was quite amusing, but I couldn't exactly exercise my style of questioning with a room full of CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and DOJ bureaucrats breathing down my neck."

"How can I get in on this questioning?" Her voice dripped with dark glee, something Sydney did not want to examine too closely.

"You can't." Sydney did not bother to censor her surprise. "The government seems to think that you and Vaughn want to kill her. No clue where they could have gotten _that_ from."

She started grasping at straws. "But they let _you_ talk to her!"

"True, but I don't want her dead; I just like to make her suffer — big difference. Like the difference between not breathing at all and... breathing through a ball gag." Shadow shrugged in earnest. "Look, she's talking right now, so they're only going to break out the big guns when and if she starts holding out. But I think I got everything valuable out of her that we're going to get."

Something in Shadow's voice begged the question Sydney hesitated to ask. Carefully choosing her words, she said, "And what did she say?" — expecting a smart-ass comment and nothing more.

But Shay regarded the agent in front of her carefully, considering her words before deciding to answer truthfully. "She confirmed three of my suspicions. One, Sloane: check into that again. Two, there's a mental hospital in the Balkins calling your name. Three, the National Bank in Wittenburg, lot 1062. Plus a lot we didn't know. The original members and high-ups in the Covenant were not just jilted Russian ex-patriots: they were women, too, hence the name of the organization. A group of nuns is called a coven, and a powerful pact is a covenant. Of course, like any women worth their salt, they used valuable men along the way, but mostly hired mercenaries to do their dirty work. They were convinced that Rambaldi's prophecies — all focusing on women — would bring about a world in which men were obsolete; therefore, obsession. Think little, deprived sister of the Alliance. So who do they get to head this shindig? None other than The Man herself, named so that no one would catch on to their objective. It was their male partners, though, that made the Covenant less coherent than it had been in its infant stages and forced their way in to the organization.

"Of course, Barbie used a lot more words to say this: mostly small, simple ones that were easy to say."

Sydney spent more than a moment soaking up the information, but halfway through her computations, she realized she still needed more data. "That's all very nice, but it's general; what are the specifics? What are _her_ specifics?"

Exhaling loudly through her nose, Shadow shook her head helplessly. "Guess there's no harm in telling you, 'cause it will eventually pillow-talk its way out through Vaughn anyway, regardless of classification level.

"She is/was the mole. Her mother pulled her into the organization upon her graduation from high school, but she was normally just doing behind-the-scenes work or small jobs, nothing on this level. Upon her graduation from college, her father pushed her into government work but kept her from the field. Too bad Mom didn't have that kind of influence; would have saved us all an ass-load of trouble.

"So anyways, when the Alliance fell and no one was taking a vested interest in the Chosen One, the Covenant decided to pounce. They knew of the double and merely waited for sparks before they kidnapped you and sent in Lauren."

Here she breathed and gathered herself, piquing Sydney's curiosity even further. "During the alone time they had for his deposition on Derevko, Lauren brainwashed Vaughn, conditioned him into believing that you were actually dead. At the time, he was at the height of his investigation into your disappearance and, y'know, you're his soulmate, so it kind of took a while. Like, up-until-their-marriage a while. Her original endgame was to coax him back to the CIA and steal anything and everything she could, but when you showed up again, all freshly escaped from Covenant custody, that changed. She needed to bring you in, pronto.

"Fast-forward a few months and _a lot_ of insults later, and here we are with her in our custody." She caught the spotlight of hatred in Sydney's eyes. "And this is why the government doesn't want you two in the same room together. And why I think it would be wicked awesome fun."

"How long?" Sydney choked out. "How long have you known that she was the mole?"

Shadow scoffed and tweaked the corner of her lips. "Since the beginning, sweetcheeks. Prime suspect from day one, what with the Evil Eyeliner and all. Well, catching her on tape in a random corner of the Ops Centre pacing with her cell phone glued to her ear talking about Covenant operatives in easily-deciphered code tipped me off, too."

"So all those tests . . . ?"

"My enjoyment. I was just waiting for you and Vaughn to get your acts together and _communicate_ for the good of the greater population."

Too much information. That was what her brain said — no, screamed — as she frantically gripped the armrests of her chair. All the anguish she felt over Vaughn's marriage and the fact that he believed her death without a cold, hard body — misplaced. And this pain, utter agony really, boiling just beneath her skin was probably nothing compared to what Vaughn was feeling. . . .

"Vaughn, you _cannot_ burn down your house."

"It's not a happy home. No one should be subjected to the memories inside that place. It's better off torched."

"No, dude, you're not getting it: that's _arson_, and in Reality Land that's a crime punishable by a stay in a dirty place where you can't wear anything but orange or stripes."

"And don't forget that you can't bend down a lot," Shadow interjected as Weiss and Vaughn approached. Fury raged in all of Vaughn's features on the short walk, but once he caught Sydney's gaze, he managed to dilute his fervor to merely acidic hate. But he clenched and unclenched his fists within the confines of his pockets even as he stood there. Shadow nodded towards him but addressed Sydney, who rose up to stand next to Vaughn. "Obviously he's beaten out the conditioning, so he probably doesn't think you're dead anymore and that the best he can get is Barbie. She sure did a bang-up job on him."

"I'm still in the room, Shay."

"Your point?"

"So . . ." Weiss transitioned, clapping his hands and appealing to Sydney for help. "Now that you've done what you came here to do, Shadow, what's next?"

Picking up on her friend's thread, Sydney asked, "Yeah, are you going to stay here?" She felt some of the raw hate diffuse from Vaughn's body as she threaded her fingers through his, and she knew that if he had even the slightest ability to calm down with just a touch after being told (very explicitly) every detail of his wife's endgame . . . She knew. She just did.

They loved each other enough. They could do it.

Shadow observed this interaction with the hint of a grin. Shaking her head, she replied, "My work here is done. There's no reason to stick around."

Weiss looked how Sydney felt. She could see his mental wheels spinning on ice, trying to gain traction long enough to track down a reason for her to stay in Los Angeles. But even as she suddenly could not imagine work without this haunting woman with x-ray eyes, a black sense of humour, and a tongue that spoke the truth _especially_ when it was not wanted, Sydney realized the personal ramifications of Shadow becoming a permanent member of the team. Besides taking it upon herself to see that the Sydney Bristow-Michael Vaughn relationship flourished — and any number of times that would require her to butt into their personal affairs — a person like Shadow needed to roam the Earth without strings. Irritable would not begin to describe Shay's demeanor if she set down roots in one place. So—

"Where are you going?" Sydney signaled the shift in the conversation, flicking Weiss a significant glance. "Who should we warn that you're coming?"

"Well," she said, an adventurous glint springing up in her eyes, "I hear the Middle East is in need of some shuffling. And then there's this guy in Afghanistan who's the leader of this, like, really big terrorist organization. I think you've heard of him before."

"Yeah, just a little bit," Sydney answered, nodding and grinning at the prospect of Shadow tracking down one of the world's most notorious criminals. "But you'll keep in touch, right?" Seeing her once in a while could do _some_ good, she decided.

"Of course. You have Jules in custody; I'll come by and play with him from time to time, no worries there." Abruptly, she turned to Weiss and admitted. "I guess you could warrant a visit, too. You know, if you weren't scared off by the whole Jules/Rey thing."

Now Weiss had no idea what to think. Those mental wheels completely fell off the cart, and all he could come up with was, "Huh?"

Shay's face still gave away nothing. "My number's on your desk. My plane leaves tomorrow morning, so I'll be at Dyson's bar with a vodka tonic until midnight, at which time I will be leaving with someone. Whether you show up or not is your prerogative."

But Weiss had already pounced on his desk, burrowing into the tree graveyard like nothing else. Sydney had never seen him move so fast.

Wheeling on the couple, a genuine smile danced across Shay's lips, entirely transforming her face into a different shade of beautiful. She looked... kind. "How's that ankle of yours, Syd? Feeling a bit better?"

Sydney had to look down at the joint in order to assess its competency; the bliss bubbling in her stomach blocked out all other emotions. The slight black and blue diluted by her nylons merely seemed like make-up intent on destroying her happy mood. She could not feel any throbbing or discomfort of any kind. "A lot, actually."

"So." The adventurous glint sparked into a blaze. "What's next?"

Sydney felt Vaughn's gaze, and she squeezed his hand. "I think we're going to get some coffee."

* * *

Two coffees.

Two bagels.

Two sugars.

Two creams.

Two napkins.

One Shadow.

And that's a one she could live with.

_**END**_

That's all! Big, huge, loving hug to everyone who read/reviewed/favorited/alerted this story/humble author: enough gratitude cannot be expressed. I think this is the last fic I have to upload to FFN to get caught up with SD-1, but I do have other works in the hopper (for both this fandom and others), so keep your eyes open! Don't forget to leave your love, comments, and criticism before you check out. And lurkers: it's your last chance! Tell me what you think!

And because it's what I always say at the end of a longer project: tootles and snickerdoodles.

:D Becky, the Dream Writer 4 Life


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